Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

This is the latest film from director Luc Besson, perhaps best known for the 1997 feature The Fifth Element. Based on the French science fiction comic book series Valérian and Laureline, which ran from 1967 to 2010, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Plants shares the crowded visual sense of The Fifth Element, though perhaps the best point of comparison might be the 1968 movie Barbarella. Both films were directed by Frenchmen (Roger Vadim in the case of Barbarella), based on French comic books from the 1960's, depict crowded, trippy, and not always coherent futures centuries hence, and made points of emphasizing the figures of their female leads, who play outer space secret agents, in Barbarella Jane Fonda, in Valerian Cara Delevingne.

Delveingne is Laureline and she is partnered (logically) with Valerian (Dane DeHaan), a notorious ladies man who is constantly trying to convince Laureline he would give it all up if she would marry him. The two spar continuously throughout the film, though the chemistry is not very strong and you'll likely find you don't care much if they end up together or not. For plot the couple become involved in a case that ends up related to the genocide of a peaceful, Polynesian-type alien race, and the subsequent cover up. They do most of their sleuthing on Alpha, a kind of Babylon 5 on steroids whose origin story, depicted at the beginning of the film, is its most interesting part.

I found the movie entertaining enough, I was never really bored, though I have serious doubts about the films re-watchability. Clive Owen and Ethan Hawke are in this, and John Goodman voices a CGI character. Rihanna appears as a shape-shifting alien "performer" and does a pretty suggestive dance so this movie isn't really for kids, though to be honest I'm not sure who it is for. **