“We know how humans work. They are so predictable.”
“Clearly you’ve never met a woman.”
Valerian is often compared to its counterpart, The Fifth Element, a cheesy sci-fi romp audiences enjoyed. Both were from the mind of hit-or-miss director, Luc Besson, and despite following the same formula audiences didn’t quite click with Valerian. I personally hold the belief that the critical reception for the two films should be switched around. The Fifth Element is fun but extremely annoying to me. I hate Chris Tucker’s Jar Jar-esque performance and the creepiness towards Milla Jovovich’s childlike character. The story also feels incomplete as if it ends in the second act. Valerian feels like a much more refined version of this with tons of world building and hilarious off-beat characters. The film is an even better romp after smoking a bowl or two.
After a delightful opening credit sequence set to the tune of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, the film opens in a distant world that is inhabited by beings who have essentially perfected their way of life. They are all stable and in tune with each other. They take only what they need from their environment and replenish it to create balance everyday. These people are what humans have failed to be. Within the first 5 min you are in love with these peaceful beings then they are swiftly and mercilessly destroyed by falling debris. It’s an intense opening that’ll send a rush of emotions through you in a short span of time. From there it’s sci-fi mayhem as we follow two secret agents played by Dane DeHaan and Clara Delevingne, who are investigating a deal happening at a (half?) virtual mall that is related to the perfect beings from earlier. The investigation leads them to the Alpha Station (city of a thousand planets) where they embark on a quest through just about every world you could think of to uncover answers behind the extinction of an entire race.
I found myself constantly being blown away by everything I was seeing in Valerian. I doubt you even need to be smoking to feel similarly, the film is drop dead gorgeous. Every piece just seems to fit. At first I laughed at the military outfits with the golden circuits drawn all over them but then I realized we decorate our military outfits with golden leaves and branches so in their world it’s basically the same thing. The film also makes great use of its strange creatures and their abilities, like these weird merchants who sell predictions about the future because of their actual reliability. The worlds, visuals, story and side characters are the defining reasons to watch this movie high. Every frame has you wondering, every alien has you guessing what their part in the mega society is and the story, while predictable, is actually pretty engaging.
The biggest detriment to this film (and i noticed this even more high) were the main character arcs. Let me start by saying I actually love the main characters. We’ve got Dane DeHaan playing a scrawny macho man and Clara Delevingne as an absolutely driven agent that never holds back. The two of them are a hilarious pair and I love their off-beat chemistry. However, I started to notice inconsistencies in their characters. They say they’re one way but act a different way two seconds later. By the end of the film I couldn’t understand what their half baked arcs were even supposed to be. It doesn’t hurt the film that much, especially when you’re high because it’s likely you won’t care.
Valerian is an absolute blast and it’s only enhanced by smoking a bowl along with it. It gets far too much hate for what it is and I find it unfair to see Fifth Element getting the attention it deserves. Honestly it doesn’t matter how you’re watching it, give it a try. It’s the fun and cheesy romp it promised to be.
Critical Consensus: 7/10
High Factor 10/10
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