Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets (***)

VALERIAN has apparently been a passion project for Luc Besson ever since he directed "The Fifth Element." A lot of the same elements are there, and we have a clear visual style that is evidence of the director's love of sci-fi. In fact, we can see this movie drawing inspiration from many sources. It's quite a beautiful movie I will admit. The CGI is beautiful and the sets are impressive. Why did this movie fall flat for me? Every character is a dud.

The story is inspired by a famous French comic book in which Agent Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) work to fight crime a couple hundred years in the future. In fact, we know this is the future though a fun opening sequence in which we watch the International Space Station merge with China. Over the years it continues to grow until alien races eventually show up and join on, too. Eventually we are left with a space station that is like a futuristic New York City: a blend of culture and races and technology, floating in space as a meeting point for all the universe's planets. Valerian and Laureline are just small pegs in a massive puzzle. They work for a human-based organization and act as rogue agents that seek justice in a morally gray area.

The basic story is that of an ancient alien race that was all but wiped out during a large space battle years ago. They lived on beautiful beaches and harvested pearls from the ocean. A few of them escaped the planet's destruction and found their way to the Big City. I suppose it's kind of a mystery movie in the way Valerian stumbles onto the major conspiracy here. At first he has a dream of the planet's destruction, but eventually he begins to think it actually happened.

VALERIAN is an unapologetically colorful movie full of a dynamic blend of aliens, sets, and costumes. We can feel the filmmaker's love for this project and at times can feel the weight of it's over-saturation. Even if it goes against the story at hand, the movie is so crammed full of aliens and sets just as a means to show off, it eventually becomes like a sugar rush that began to hurt my head. The plot is surprisingly similar to Jame's Cameron's "Avatar" in that a government agency seeks to annihilate a primitive alien race for their own benefit. That movie was beautiful as well, filled with impressive CGI and characters. There, we could understand the world of Pandora and it's story. Here, it's a constant barrage of new sets and people. It's hard to keep up.

And the characters, oh boy. DeHaan as Valerian plays the role just as Keanu Reeves might in any 1990's action movie. He even gets the voice down. He flirts with Laureline and asks her to marry him, to which she refuses. The romance between them is a constant reference throughout the film as a means of building their characters, but never once do we believe that these two even like each other past some sort of mutual respect. Valerian later runs into a shapeshifter named Bubble (Rihanna) who fills the role of sacrificial friend that saves the day. It's a fun character idea but hampered by a stilted Rihanna performance that will not go down in history as a "memorable" movie death. Then there's the General (Clive Owen) who is the cliched leader without emotion and a thirst for destruction.

I saw the movie in 3D and was amazed by the details of this world. There are great sequences of action and technology (a heist scene in which Valerian goes to a Virtual Marketplace to stop a criminal exchange is both wonderful and intriguing) and yet I left the movie feeling like I had watched something so artificial. There isn't a character here we care for nor a set piece that brings genuine suspense or tension. As realistic as the movie looks at times, we always know that most of what we are seeing is 'fake.' There aren't any real repercussions at play. Even if there were, would we even care? This is a movie that would work just as well on mute. It's gorgeous, but there's not much more to get out of it.