Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne (Vikram Gounassegarin/2016 VALERIAN SAS Ð TF1 FILMS PRODUCTION)
The planet Mul is a rainbow-colored tropical environment inhabited by awkward, luminous creatures that look like a cross between Handsome Squidward and albino versions of Avatar’s Na’vi people. The Mul people fuel their planet by means of dense pearls that they feed to a creature that looks as if painter-of-light Thomas Kinkade threw up on a baby armadillo; after ingesting just one pearl, the colorful scaly critter excretes hundreds of identical pearls from all over its little body.
This beast is called the Mul converter, and it’s the central force driving Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
You see, Mul is destroyed, and at the moment of destruction, one of the very special Mulians inexplicably decides to send a telepathic distress signal to Valerian (Dane DeHaan), who’s some kind of intergalactic beat cop. He wants his partner Laureline (Cara Delevigne) to marry him, but they’re both so forgettable that their tenuous romantic arc barely registers. Which means the movie careens from hideous visuals to tedious love stories to rote intergalactic politics.
Director Luc Besson made some of the great action movies of the ’90s with La Femme Nikita and Leon: The Professional, but while he got somewhat better marks for Lucy, his star has plummeted drastically. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is dense with color, action, and what seems like a thousand planets worth of creatures, and some of it does stick.
Ethan Hawke, who has lately become a reliable character actor, stands out in this mess playing a character called Jolly the Pimp, the star of his stable being a shape-shifting alien played by Rihanna.
I didn’t dream this!
Gleefully coaxing Valerian into hiring his pole-dancing shapeshifting pop star, Hawke is the only actor here who seems to be having any fun, though it’s a rare treat to see jazz legend Herbie Hancock as an intergalactic Defense Minister. Who would have thunk that the one-time Miles Davis collaborator and “Rockit” composer would have the perfect screen persona for a middle manager?
If some of the alien dynamics bear more than a passing resemblance to Star Wars, there’s a reason. The movie is adapted from Pierre Christin’s Valérian and Laureline a French comics series that began in 1967 and influenced Lucas and other science fiction world-builders. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets isn’t a complete waste, but if Ethan Hawke playing a space pimp is the best thing it has going for it, something went very wrong.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Written and directed by Luc Besson
Based on the comic book series by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières
With Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action, suggestive material and brief language
137 minutes
Opens today at area theaters.
