38/100
Second viewing, last seen on video in 1998. (Skipped it in theaters, don’t remember why I watched it a year later. Wasn’t an EW assignment.) At that time I hadn’t yet seen Barbarella, which now seems like Fifth Element’s conceptual and tonal godparent; problem is, I don’t much like Barbarella and find Besson's adolescent-minded wackiness here equally tiresome. Even if the narrative's dopey by design (quite a generous thought), it's music-video thin, a series of outré images that have assembled into nothing satisfying or coherent even on the film's own self-limited terms. You can see that most clearly in Gary Oldman's Zorg (not, I had to remind myself, Emperor Zurg), who's just an ugly haircut pasted atop an inexplicable Southern accent and never even encounters Bruce Willis' hero, or really does much of anything apart from flamboyantly fume once in a whole. Often I’m just feeling embarrassed on behalf of the actors—Ian Holm likely shot this either right before or immediately following his titanic performance in The Sweet Hereafter (both premiered at Cannes ’97), and while I suppose it’s credit to his range that he could deliver one of the most harrowing monologues ever written and sputter “It’s the f-f-f-f-fifth element!” before falling backwards in an ostensibly comical dead faint, to me it smacks of watching Leo Kottke play “Wild Thing” on the kazoo. Willis coasts on persona, Jovovich looks hot in strategically placed bandages and has fun with one stretch during which Leeloo gets overly enthusiastic about something called a MultiPass. I'll allow that Besson made flying cars more visually spectacular than anyone had previously managed (arguably than anyone has managed since), but that's one sequence lasting just a few minutes; Gaultier did memorable work, but no phrase better exemplifies damning with faint praise than "the costumes were amazing!" Bottom line is I don't have nearly as much fun with Fifth Element as its cheery stupidity requires. But I never did it see it on the big screen, maybe that helps.