Valerian & the City of a Thousand Planets

Cast: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu, Rutger Hauer

Rated: 5/10

Director Luc Besson has dedicated this beautiful spatial odyssey to his father. Perhaps, that’s why it is so other-worldly. But for the Indian viewer, it is somewhat of a bewildering cascade of aliens, issues and landscapes.

So there are all these species in the universe that have been staying in cohesion for some centuries in a galactic colony floating the Milky Way with annual get-togethers and understanding guarded by the humans.

Imagination runs amok here, be it the picture-perfect beach destination in a struck-off-from-the-registers planet in Mul, or its pearl collecting, environment-friendly, glittery statuesque species inhabiting that planet in giant conch shells, or the slimy monstrosities doing the crack job of contract criminals, or the artificial intelligence gatherers which look like golden goblins – the unimaginable are all here to regale you with a world that you cannot even imagine.

All this is centred round a Major who guards this peaceful co-existence. Aptly called Valerian (maybe due to his duties of maintaining an anti-spasmodic, sedated existence of a world beyond comprehension), he, however, has annoying eye bags indicative of a persistent hangover. But he has the speed of lightening and a romantic heart he has given to his understudy, an unnecessarily uptight spoiler.

That’s the romantic part of the film which is otherwise so intricately imaginative that instead of drawing you in, it lets you engage in a tedious game to unravel all that is there on the Besson table.

At best, this high on Besson’s long-nurtured passion, $180 million comic book French production is a space oddity treading on the thin ice of a faltering storyline. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 30 July, 2017