I went into this without much in the way of expectations. While the director Luc Besson has made some good movies, he's also made some clunkers (his Joan of Arc movie for example, where the main feature was lots of screaming). I wasn't sure which this would be and it turned out to be a combination of very separate good elements and bad ones. If you care about all elements of the movie being well executed and working together you might be disappointed, but if you go in only expecting visuals and the world to be interesting, you might enjoy the movie.
I'm not going to give much background because you probably know already or can look up things such as the source material.
The world building and creature creation are beautiful and interesting. The opening montage set to an edited version of David Bowie's Space Oddity works well. The bazaar is a fun concept and interesting to watch along with most of the settings and creatures in the movie.
Unfortunately, the male lead seems to have taken lessons from the Keanu Reeves School of Acting, the female lead seems wooden and the chemistry between the two is non-existent even though the movie makes a major thing out of it.
The plotting is thin, the dialog weak, the bad guys more predictable than any movie in recent history.
Overall, I was struck by just how juvenile many elements seemed, as though they'd asked a fully average 7 to 10 year old to write the dialog and script. Pixar Studios and others have raised the bar on kids movies because they give everyone something more to enjoy from a movie, even when aimed at kids. This was more like a kids serial pumped out in the early half of the 20th century as far as plot and predictability. Oh, PS, if the characters ever get in trouble, they just fall through a hole to get out of it (as a Besson version of deus ex machina).
Even with all the problems it was OK to watch because of the world--not exactly a waste of time, but not something I really want to see again, either. It's too bad Besson couldn't have just given us a tour of the world and just dropped the pretense around having a functioning plot or decent casting, acting or chemistry between the leads.
I'm not going to give much background because you probably know already or can look up things such as the source material.
The world building and creature creation are beautiful and interesting. The opening montage set to an edited version of David Bowie's Space Oddity works well. The bazaar is a fun concept and interesting to watch along with most of the settings and creatures in the movie.
Unfortunately, the male lead seems to have taken lessons from the Keanu Reeves School of Acting, the female lead seems wooden and the chemistry between the two is non-existent even though the movie makes a major thing out of it.
The plotting is thin, the dialog weak, the bad guys more predictable than any movie in recent history.
Overall, I was struck by just how juvenile many elements seemed, as though they'd asked a fully average 7 to 10 year old to write the dialog and script. Pixar Studios and others have raised the bar on kids movies because they give everyone something more to enjoy from a movie, even when aimed at kids. This was more like a kids serial pumped out in the early half of the 20th century as far as plot and predictability. Oh, PS, if the characters ever get in trouble, they just fall through a hole to get out of it (as a Besson version of deus ex machina).
Even with all the problems it was OK to watch because of the world--not exactly a waste of time, but not something I really want to see again, either. It's too bad Besson couldn't have just given us a tour of the world and just dropped the pretense around having a functioning plot or decent casting, acting or chemistry between the leads.