Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets review…

Clara Delevingne (Suicide Squad) and Dane DeHaan (Chronicle) lead this galactic sci-fi adventure from Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), based on the classic graphic novel series that’s inspired countless films including Star Wars. Also stars Clive Owen, aka, the bad guy (Children of Men) and eh, Rihanna…

The movie is a fun, colourful, visually spectacular space opera. Just imagine, the sci-fi universe jumping out at you like THE FIFTH ELEMENT… on steroids. Valerian is exuberant, extravagant, and generally likable…

The plot? Fuzzy! But the opening is ingenious. Bonus points for using David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in the opening sequence, and the enchanting way that humanity and other terrestrials have joined together to form a new home in space.

Besson zips across decades and centuries to show how various far-flung civilizations glommed on to the International Space Station, ultimately forming Alpha, a floating megalopolis and a gloriously utopian vision of interspecies coexistence.

An evolution over centuries of a space city, to which everyone from (earthlings) alien emissaries arrive and shake hands (or the mystifying cultural equivalent) with their human hosts.

That “city of a thousand planets” is called Kyrian, and it’s where knowledge and culture are shared among as many species. It’s also where our male and female heroes, federal agents, are summoned to investigate some sort of anomaly … (and there’s a McGuffin thrown in as well, somewhere!)

In comes the second act, and we land on a beach on a planet called Mul, where a stringy, elongated female with luminous blue skin gazes in joy at creature that shakes off gems like water droplets. (The people of Mül are striking, statuesque figures with shimmery skin and Na’vi-like features, and they live in giant conch shells and wash their faces with iridescent sea pearls).

This idyllic existence is immediately disturbed by giant spaceships that darken the sky — what looks like an invasion but turns out to be a rain of downed vessels from a war raging above. It might as well be an invasion, though: It destroys the planet. But the young female we’ve been following sends her life force… or over-spirit… or something across the galaxy and into the body of Valerian.

Then we’re introduced to two special agents, whom we see cavorting in their swimwear before they strap on their ray guns and jet-propelled spacesuits, happen to be lovers as well as colleagues. Dane DeHaan plays Valerian, who supposedly has nine years of space swashbuckling under his buckle, but looks about 14. He has a worldly air in those blue eyes, and he’s a cutie, but his voice is in the Keanu Reeves ‘dead’ zone.

His partner is Laureline, played by Cara Delevingne. Can Delevingne act… comes into play, and lines like, “My heart will belong to a man who will erase his playlist” don’t make her job easier. But she has the right attitude, that Besson loves in a leading lady. Besson loves bodies in general, colours and varieties of shapes — thin and spindly, jiggly, all of them in harmonious motion.

I’m a great fan of Luc Besson’s visionary work, and he runs a successful movie factory out of his studio in the Paris suburbs, but there’s not enough quality control over scripts — particularly his own. The comic-book series that fired his imagination has clean, straightforward narratives. But… in the film, you never know quite what the characters are doing and why.

In a sequence that subplots from the main plot, Rihanna is introduced (as a shape-shifter) does a cabaret act while metamorphosing into different characters with different costumes and hairstyles. (Ethan Hawke guest stars and portrays as a cowboy pimp with piercings and guyliner who has enslaved poor Rihanna.)

What else? Let’s see… a virtual-reality bazaar. A Jabba the Hutt-like blob. Illegal immigration… Refugee crisis plot… A child with a Japanese Teletubbie-like face is a treat, but the most entertaining aliens are called the Doghan Daguis, a trio of furry, fast-talking quasi-ducks who act as “information brokers” and finish one another’s sentences. (Kinda resembling, Duck-billed monkeys). Jellyfish anus. Rihanna, again!

An expansive, expensive adventure whose creativity outweighs its more uneven elements. It started so well there was plenty of CGI aliens and it was big time pretty and rich with life and purpose. The biggest problem for the film… Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne are miscast as Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline.

When it’s just the two of them on screen together, the movie is… awful to bearable. They look like kids and have no chemistry.  As a result, it just comes across as silly to have these 2 kids as the soldiers.

The movie wasn’t shot in 3-D, but the retrofitting is gorgeous, with a dizzying number of planes on which a dizzying number of events unfold: a fun, creative film, with plenty of energy and drive but the script needs to polished next time, Mr Besson.