Fifth Excrement

Rating: 1/10 (21 August 2003)

Though I love Science Fiction, it surely must have more stinker movies than any other genre, the most annoying kind of sci-fi stinker for me is the one that poses all over the place and forgets to include a good story, i.e; The Fifth Element.
If you're a Luc Besson fan you'll doubtless love his obsession with style over substance, you'll love his 'hilarious' and 'quirky' character caricatures and you'll go all wet at the 'fabulous' over-the-top wackiness of his story situations. It's not that I can't like this sort of stuff (the other kind of sci-fi stinker is the way too serious one, like The Phantom Menace) but it's just the way Besson does it, self-consciously smirking to himself, I don't know, maybe its just a French thing.
There are good things here, the futuristic cityscape is beautiful, the best since that seen in Bladerunner, and a colorful counterpoint to that film's gloomy vision. Bruce Willis isn't too bad here, doesn't stretch himself too much but does a decent job of being the straight man amongst all the crazy stuff.
On the other hand, Gary Oldman hams wildly as the villain as usual, that joke isn't funny anymore, Chris Tucker - likewise. The beautiful but otherwise extremely untalented Milla Jovovich is in this movie too, arguably the worst female actress of all time as she again demonstrates here. Some of the design in this movie is great, though not some of the wackier catwalk stuff by Jean Paul Gaultier and not the alien bad guys either, which look and move not unlike turd-shaped hand-puppets.
Avoid this one. 1/10.