Positively one of the worst movie blunders of all time.

Rating: Null/10 (16 April 2000)

First things first: the only reason I am writing this review is because of the overwhelming amount of high ratings given this film, and its 7.0 average star rating. Given this information I have no choice but to assume the people seeing this film have never seen any science fiction, comedy, or in fact any movie of any weight at all ever in their life. Lets address the issues:
Plot: Abysmal The plot of this movie is something like what you wrote in 5th grade for the composition part of the day, complete with that cool gun you always wanted. I read a review describing it as too complicated; that's a bit like saying a lego is complicated... No, this movie's 'plot' is simple, derivative, juvenile and eventually unnecessary. Whomever commented that it is a little better than Dark City, I urge you to go soak your head and maybe watch the 5th Element sober this time.
Acting: Laughable Bruce Willis plays himself. Beautiful Milla Jovovich speaks gibberish...how hard is that? Gary Oldman terribly directed, it looks like it physically pains him to say each line with that ridiculous accent. Chris Tucker is obnoxious and unnecessary. Everyone else is as well, I suppose.
Special effects/style: They blew it If I were to give this movie any credit, it would be in this category--there was a monumental effort to get me to like this film by the director, costumer, cinematographer, etc etc, but none of them could do their job well. I was sad to see this movie so badly directed after seeing Leon (The Professional in the USA), which is on my top 10. The costumes were not over the top, they were ridiculous, we'll leave it at that. Everything in the movie was exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Now I'm a fan of action, SF, comedy, and everything this film tries to be, and I can't think of one film that has done ANYTHING as badly as any given part of this movie. The special effects were a mixed bag--the city was decent, but not visionary as some of you have put it, just fun for a moment, which was soon lost. In the first scene, I actually thought the animatronic alien things were a joke until they turned out to be an 'important' part of the movie's 'plot.' When this was made clear to me I nearly died laughing. For those of you who haven't seen it, you'll know what I mean when you do. There's no real style to the cinematography, directing, or editing; it was all done on the fly, I think, resulting in some shabby and excessive shots.
Overall: just too bad to even consider I realize that some of you will say this movie doesn't take itself seriously, but I disagree; no 16-year old kid writes something like this to be a self-parody, not even Luc Besson. Some will say it's just mindless fun. Mindless yes, fun.....well, the gags weren't funny, the action was melodramatic, hideously overdone, and gimmicky all over. That cool gun? It plays no part in the movie at all, and it takes up about 5 min of screen time. Same for Christ Tucker's character.
Bottom line: If the producers of this movie intended it to be this bad, I sincerely applaud them, because they succeeded marvelously in creating such an abominally bad piece of cinema (even popcorn cinema) that I actually thought it was made to be a serious hollywood movie. The ONLY reasons to rent this are 1:an overdone version of the do's and don'ts of movies, minus the don'ts. see it if you want to make movies--this isn't what you want to do. And 2:Milla Jovovich does the only good job at anything in this movie, being beautiful...and she doesn't even have to try. Thus concludes the panning.
And for all of you who sincerely enjoyed this movie..... never mind.