Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Director: Luc Besson
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 1.5
Several centuries from now, Federal Agents Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) have to locate a much-coveted device called the "Mül Converter" (which can make an exact copy of any item in the universe) and find out what happened to a race of aliens known as Pearls after their planet was obliterated (as a result of a nasty space battle, commandeered by a slimy Clive Owen). I guess you can't fault Besson for going-for-broke here (risking actually going broke), throwing out every bizarro sci-fi idea from the comics by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières - portal guns, a critter that actually shits money, jellyfish used as a memory device, Rihanna playing a stripper (okay, that wasn't in the books) - except those ideas need to actually 'gel,' and not just appear to be haphazardly strung together. It's a glorious mess, especially with the hammy dialogue, Dane trying to be Han Solo (using Christian Bale's Batman voice) and recycling other movies from the same genre (Avatar and A.I. Artificial Intelligence being two notable ones). It's not 'so bad it's good,' but 'so bad at trying to be good you feel bad for it.'
