Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Thing is, every time I had to focus on the two main characters, the noticeable holes in all of this started to grow bigger and become more bothersome.

It's an enjoyable mess. Like all modern fantasy based on computer-generated technique, it confuses movement and action.

Besson loves messing around with time and space.

[Valerian] istoo much of a feast for the senses to be a bad movie, but it has too little A-game Besson to be a good one.

This film won't be troubling awards season. Unless they're handing out Oscars for leading eyebrows.

Besson might have been aiming for an astral fantasy in the vein of Avatar, but he ended up with something closer to the workmanlike galactic ripping yarn of John Carter.

...a nearly 140 minutes slog through poor storytelling, boring characters, laughably bad dialogue, and CGI overload.

If you’d asked me ... if it would matter that I’d spend a good three-quarters of a movie having no idea what was going on, I would have said: Yes. Yes, that would matter. But that was before I’d seen Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

The outcome here is uneven: admirable for its ambition and mindless entertainment value, unable to hold up under close scrutiny, and often dazzlingly beautiful.

It's a celebration of color and adventure and that's gotta be worth something.