Hi, my name is Jan Sackmann. I am writing this week’s review in place of my son, who was too disgusted with “The Fifth Element” to write the column himself. He and I went to see the movie on Mother’s Day, and I’m relieved that it wasn’t his present to me, or I’d be very disappointed in his judgement, and rightfully so.
Above all else, “The Fifth Element” was very confusing. Jeff told me he didn’t know what was going on for the first 45 minutes; I was baffled for the first two hours and seven minutes, right up until the end credits rolled, and I knew it was time to leave.
The worst part of the confusion, though, was that I never knew whether this movie was supposed to be a comedy, a sci-fi adventure, a thriller, or an episode of “Babylon 5.” I asked Jeff, but he screamed at me and told me in no uncertain terms never to discuss the movie again.
While I don’t know Bruce Willis personally, I think he mostly plays himself, 300 years in the future. Only in the future he he drives a cab and isn’t married to Demi Moore. I wasn’t impressed, but my son hated him more; whenever Willis came on screen, Jeff looked like he was in a great deal of pain.
Willis’s character, Korben Dallas, lives in a small room that looks like the Jetson’s house, only smaller, and without a robot to clean the place. I was so unconvinced by his portrayal that I couldn’t stop concentrating on the scar from his shoulder surgery and the four piercings in his left ear.
However, Bruce Willis’s house isn’t the only cartoon-like part of this movie . In fact, the future in “The Fifth Element” is quite similar to the future in “The Jetsons,” only in the movie, there is no color. Everything is either grey, or black, or somewhere in between.
Besides Bruce Willis’s piercings and general lack of neatness, this movie is about some evil culture that is out to destroy the earth, simply because it is evil. At first, the government tries shooting at the planet, but it grows, and becomes even more sinister. Then, all of the sudden, something arrives on earth that appears to be “perfect,” and a scientist turns it into Milla Jovovich.
At this point, I knew the movie would have no effective moral. Milla may be a supermodel, but anyone with a brain of their own should know that that isn’t all it takes to be perfect. Her “perfection,” though, doesn’t go unheeded later on in the film, when she changes shirts twice, and never wears more than a haltertop.
After she appears out of nowhere, she escapes her glass enclosure, and evades authorities by jumping off a building, right into Bruce Willis’s cab. Then, at her request, he takes her to a priest, who realizes that she is the key to saving the world.
Reading over what I’ve written so far, I realize that the plot details seem random, pointless, and really stupid. It’s not that Jeff writes better than I do, though. The movie was just as random, just as pointless, and just as stupid.
As the movie progressed, a parade of evil characters appeared, said scary things with unpredictable accents, shot at people, and seemed to be working against the goals of Bruce and Milla, but I still never knew who the bad guys were, for sure.
Gary Oldman, wearing some sort of plastic shield and consorting with stranger-looking animals, was quite entertaining, and I found myself cheering for him until he started setting bombs and shooting at everyone.
As it turns out (or so Jeff tells me) Bruce and Milla were out to save the world from the evil planet. The real problem though, is movies like this one, and Bruce Willis could do the world a much better service by just not acting in them anymore.
Grade: D-