Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

A spectacular spectacle of a movie that faithfully adapts a French 1970s sci-fi comic book. If you think you might see it some day, you owe it to yourself to catch it in 3D on a big screen now. In a world of paint-by-numbers blockbusters, this is an invigorating slap to the eyeballs.

The flick would benefit from more focus and deliberation; often, story beats are glancing blows instead of precision hits. The biggest flaws, however, are found in the dialogue, which is at best serviceable and at times painful, probably owing to its transition through times, languages, and mediums.

Valerian isn't perfect, it's a bit clunky, but the sheer unusualness, whimsy, and wonder overpowers the movie's faults, making it well worth watching.

It's a fun movie, but it's not what I would call a sci fi classic. It's all spectacle, with eye popping visuals. It creates some really interesting side characters and alien worlds. The drawback is the two leads. They seem rather bland and one dimensional. Their romantic bantering is quite boring. The supporting characters are more colorful and interesting. If you are a fan of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, you will probably enjoy this. Just don't expect anything too deep from this movie.

Well, the scenes start comin' and they don't stop comin'. Aaaand that's basically the whole movie.

No, honestly by the end of it I was actually pretty on board. It took me a lot to get to that point though. The ham-fisted romance subplot they kept awkwardly grinding the movie to a standstill for was chief amongst the swill I felt I had to wade through to get to that point of enjoyment. The primary alien race being the most poorly animated was another. But somewhere between the Rhianna actually being bearable in this, and the Ethan Hawke character I want to see 500 more times, I did actually somewhat enjoy Valerian... Somewhat.

_Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole._