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'The Fifth Element': Expensive French junk
May 11, 1997
Web posted at: 6:09 p.m. EDT (2209 GMT)From Reviewer Paul Tatara
(CNN) -- Leave it to the French to determine that the Supreme Being is an androgynous fashion model with pouty lips, a bare midriff, and foam rubber hot pants. This is just one of the countless inanities available for your perusal in Luc Besson's science fiction fiasco, "The Fifth Element." This movie proves, yet again, that ridiculously loud, incredibly expensive junk is still just junk, plain and simple. This is without a doubt the most horrendous thing I've seen so far this year, but an argument could probably be made that that is exactly what Bresson was shooting for.
A L S O Director Besson explores new worlds with "The Fifth Element"
Besson's entire visual sense seems to stem from the fashion world aesthetic in which people convince themselves to wallow in overdone tastelessness as a badge of honor. As much as anything else, "The Fifth Element" is like one of those runway shows that gets so self-importantly idiotic the easily hoodwinked begin to believe that a brave new vision is upon us. This is the cinematic equivalent of a gorgeous girl wearing sparkling gold panties, cowboy boots, and a 7-foot-tall Dr. Seuss hat. But with explosions.
Bruce Willis is our hero, futuristic cab driver Korben Dallas, and exactly what's up with Bruce Willis? The guy has talent, but it's usually only detectable in smaller films like "Nobody's Fool" or "Pulp Fiction." By now, it's pretty obvious that he's in dire need of some help when it comes to picking out the so-called blockbuster scripts.
God bless him for being one of the few major stars who is occasionally willing to appear in low budget pictures with lesser-known directors, but when he strikes out, he strikes out big time. "Hudson Hawk" anyone? How about "Bonfire of the Vanities?" Maybe "Death Becomes Her?" Throw in the budget for "The Fifth Element" (reportedly almost $100 million) and you could feed half the starving people in the world and have enough left over to buy a good used car. With air conditioning. I almost feel sorry for Willis; sooner or later something big besides "Die Hard" has to work for him. Of course, when things go wrong, he always has Demi Moore to comfort him.
Clip: "The ZF1"
29 sec / 1.1M QuickTime movie
1:35 / 3.5M QuickTime movie
I imagine Demi will be in full chicken soup mode very soon, but you never can tell. "The Fifth Element" might be just flashy, deafening, and effects-laden enough to please that fool sitting across from you on the bus. I'm trying to work out a way to segue into relaying the plot of "The Fifth Element," but I barely knew what was going on after the first 20 minutes. Things start cranking in Egypt in 1914, during which time an old scientist and his assistant (Luke Perry. Honest.) are deciphering some hieroglyphics having to do with the four elements of nature and an unspecified "fifth element." These elements would be used to stop some ultimate evil that could one day visit us, guns a blazin'. As you might expect, this task is rudely interrupted by a team of robot warriors from outer space who all look like Bubba Smith wearing a giant, metallic hermit crab.
Flash forward 300 years. The Supreme Being, Leeloo, has come to earth to ... do something or other. After a while, it became fairly certain that Leeloo was the much ballyhooed fifth element. Maybe, but from where I was sitting, she looked like any one of the 500 or 600 ecstasy-addled beautiful people who parade weekly through the properly anointed Manhattan nightclubs.
Milla Jovovich is Leeloo, and the poor girl is mired in a no-win situation. Her outfits (and all the costumes in the film) were created by the famous designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. I know you're supposed to genuflect every time a guy like this sews together a couple strips of Lycra, but the first costume Jovovich wears looks like Gaultier really did just sew together a couple strips of Lycra. Cute on Jovovich, but hardly the kind of thing you would wear to battle the hounds of hell. Couple this with an alien language that makes her sound like the little ape kid on "Land of the Lost" and Jovovich is quickly out for the count, long legs or not.
Jovovich and Willis soon team up to zip around a very cartoonish urban landscape in his flying taxi. All kinds of things crash, whiz, roar, and explode, practically non-stop and for no discernible reason except, hell, we got all this money. Why not? I thought things would get better once Gary Oldman showed up, but that will teach me to be optimistic.
Oldman plays the bad guy. This is the future, so his name, of course, is Zorg. Bizarrely enough, Oldman has decided to deliver his lines with a Southern accent, and I don't mean that I detected a slight twang, either. I mean that he's been out back with a 12-gauge and a chaw in his mouth, shootin' at them crows that done been eatin' up all the corn. This Ming the Mississippian is the kind of performance Brando used to give in the mid-1960s, when his only reason for existence was to yank the chains of all those people who were paying him way too much money to make faces and pretend. By the end of the movie, all I wanted to do was pop a copy of "JFK" in the VCR and watch Jack Ruby put Oldman out of his misery.
Those of you who get worked up over production design and bright, Borax-enhanced colors might get a giggle out of all of this. It just seems like a lot of work and a lot of dough has been dropped on this sucker to simply generate giggles. Now, if my ears will stop ringing, I'll get on with my life.
"The Fifth Element" is rated PG-13, and that sounds about right. Any older, and you would start thinking. There is very stylized violence and, thanks to Gaultier, Milla Jovovich seems naked even when she isn't. 105 minutes.
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