Valerian & The City of 1000 Planets - Review

From the moment I saw the trailer I was salivating for the movie to be released.  I have always been a fan of Luc Besson's career.  This is the man who made La Femme Nikita, The Professional, The Fifth Element, Taken and The Transporter.  Movies that have not only captured our imaginations but become integrated into our culture.  We wouldn't have the child assassin without The Professional or the professional get-away driver without The Transporter.  

However, Luc Besson is not a sure bet when it comes to making a good film.  This is also the man responsible for Lucy, a craptastic film stuffed with enough psuedo-science to make a conspiracy theorist happy and every shitty sequel to the Transporter and Taken.  His newest creation VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS is something to be avoided.  

I am not going to bore you with the plot because, frankly, it didn't really make a lot of sense.  Something a planet that mistakenly got blown up in the middle of a war and now they need a hedgehog like creature in order to make power-pearls in order to power a holographic image inside of their escape space ship.  

Yeah not a lot of sense made with that plot.  Should have spent more time figuring out the plot and constructing the story and less time making shit look cool.  Or, maybe all the writers of the film were just way too high the entire time they were writing it.  

So, then there is the characters.  Our extremely annoying, leading male whom the movie is named after, Valerian.

He literally sounded like Keanu Reeves as Ted from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Yeah, that guy.

I know that Luc Besson wanted Valerian to be charming and dashing and heroic.  I know this because all the characters said it all the fucking time.  In fact, it seems that for this movie Besson decided that whole 'show, don't tell' motto for writers needed to be flipped around.  In this movie, the motto was 'tell, don't show.'  

Barely, even into the film Valerian flippantly proposes to Laureline.  It was so flippant I thought it was a joke, but nope he was serious enough to keep bugging her about it the whole film.  Never mind that he is such an oversexed male that he has a hard time keeping it in his pants when Rihanna does the most G rated of strip teases ever.  Never mind that Valerian doesn't bother to prepare for anything and pretty much has to keep getting rescued by Laureline.  Oh, and he is such a rebellious rule breaker that he has to be talked out of following the rules at the end by Laureline.  Honestly, just talking about this character is annoying.  He is flat, contradictory and idiotic.  Most of the movie I was hoping he would die. 

Laureline is halfway decent character but only because she doesn't have to say any of the really shitty dialogue the writers filled this film up with.  Half the dialogue she is given is her screaming for Valerian.  She is supposed to be a bad ass super smart heroine.  I guess that is why she is dressed up in a wedding dress for a alien species to eat her brains?  I mean nothing says bad ass super smart woman as a big white lacy wedding dress.  

Oh, I could go on and on with this film.  The costumes were fugly (why were there metal strips on the ass of her military skirt?), the soundtrack was over the top, the pacing was off...it all just sucked.  

When making a movie you are trying to do something impossible like catch lightening in a bottle.  This group caught something in a bottle but it sure wasn't lightening and it sure smelled like shit.

The most heartbreaking moment of the film is when you see "For my father..." in the lower right hand corner of the last frame of the film.  

TL;DR.  - One of the worst movies I have seen in years.  Shitty dialogue.  Crappy plot.  Idiotic characters.  Visually interesting.  Save your money and watch a rerun of ANYTHING ELSE.  It'll be time better spent.