French filmmaker Luc Besson has always been impossible to pigeonhole.
Throughout his impressively long career, hes been equally drawn to the muscular and the whimsical.
In a sense, the box-office success of the former have allowed him to indulge the latter.
All of those bloody knuckle sandwiches pay for his cosmic cotton candy.
It was a commercial disappointment that gradually snowballed into a cult hit.
Once dismissed, its now beloved.
If I had to make a prediction, Id guess thatValerianwill suffer a similar fate.
But lets be fair and go back to the good part: that first half hour.
The film opens with a breathtaking montage scored to the slow build of David Bowies Space Oddity.
Then the movie screen stretches out into widescreen for the birth of the International Space Station.
Decade by decade, we see other nations now coming together in space, recreating that handshake of peace.
Then centuries pass, and the next meeting isnt just another international encounter, this is First Contact.
We see a human welcoming party standing and waiting as they have in the past.
And it sets a heady, lyrical, Bowie-fueled tone that the rest of the movie never matches.
Not by a long shot.
Four hundred years later, were now on a planet called Mul.
It looks like a Caribbean paradise with white sand beaches and turquoise waters.
But its populated by a light-blue race of thin, elongated aliens right out ofAvatar.
But you go with it.
Hundreds of Mul people race into an escape ship to evacuate, some get left behind.
Its kind of silly, but also kind of moving as their planet is destroyed.
Cut to a human snapping out of a dream.
Was this all just a nightmare he had or some sort collective-unconscious distress call sent to him?
The only question ishowevil.
If not, dont worry.
Still, the biggest problem withValerianis…Valerian himself.
The movie is cast badly.
Both DeHaan and to a lesser degree Delevingne are all wrong.
To be fair, with such colorful surroundings, most young actors would do the same.
Owen, surprisingly, cant find any shades to work with, either.
Hes a gruff one-note villain, and it doesnt even look like hes having fun being bad.
Still, you have to give Besson credit for not playing it safe.
He at least swings for the fences and doesnt spoon-feed you the same old sci-fi cliches.
That counts for something.
Not enough, but something.
