Take Me Away

Conditions: Ho Humdrum

Film Review: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Luc Besson has a long and amazing track record with science fiction films, and here he's gotten really ambitious with a famous French comic book set in the distant future.  As the nations of the world started contributing more and more to a large space station, the station got bigger and bigger.  And then aliens showed up, and also helped make the station bigger.  Eventually it had to move away from the Earth and get set up as it's own planet.  Valerian and his partner Laureline are members of some kind of special intergalactic police force based on this new planet, and they along with us are thrown into a crazy story about a dead race of aliens who had these pets that could replicate what they ate, and there were these terrifically powerful pearls, and now bad guys want the last one that's left.  But it turns onto a conspiracy of how the dead aliens were actually killed, and who covered it up, and why. 

At least, I think that's what happens.  It's all a bit of a rush.  Besson is constantly throwing new ideas, aliens, locations, and plot points at us it all kind of washes over you.  There's also the hint of a romance subplot between hotshot Valerian and the no-nonsense Laureline.  But he comes across as such a jerk it's difficult to care really. 

The film is yet another triumph of design and imagination, but it gets horribly lost in a labyrinthine plot, strange characters, and a meandering tone.  Before we get to the last act we're already overwhelmed, and tired.  It's too much of a good thing, really.  It also seems to revel in constantly pulling out ridiculous sci fi gadgets or ideas to get the protagonists out of whatever scrape they're currently in.  I get that that's an important trope too, but so much of it does kind of leave the film feeling a bit... maybe childish?  Or am I just too old for this film?  Two invisible dimensions out of five.

- Peace out