Say it Now, and Say it Loud, I Like "The Fifth Element," and I'm Proud

      I just watched "The Fifth Element"(1997) again on DVD, and you know what? I still love this cartoony mess of a Frenchman's idea of a big budget scifi film. Is that a sneer I sense? A sniff? Fine. Sneer away. Inhale as loudly as you please. This is good stuff.
      It seems to me that a great deal of the critical bemusement that still hangs around this movie--even ten years later--can be laid at the feet of false expectations. After taking the "Pygmalion" story to its darkest limits in "Nikita"(1990), and one-upping John Woo's "The Killer"(1989) with his thrilling and surprisingly touching shootemup "Léon"(1994), Luc Besson was riding high. Unabashedly commercial, but capable of exploring legitimate psychological depths, Besson undoubtedly had critics excited about what he might bring to Cannes in 1997 after being handed a very-American $90 million budget for his next project. Or perhaps, in the time-honored tradition of critics, French and otherwise, the previous success and the big budget may simply have pissed them off. At any rate, what he offered them was "The Fifth Element," a convoluted fantasy that he first conceived as a teenager, starring one-note action star Bruce Willis, and a virtually unknown model/actress, Milla Jovovich. Eyebrows were raised, and a few knives were sharpened.
      With "Nikita" and "Léon" fresh in their minds, what many viewers seemed to miss, or ignore, or unfairly fault "The Fifth Element" for, is the fact that almost nothing in the movie is meant to be taken seriously. Oh sure, there's the brief, misguided attempt at sermonizing when Leeloo encounters man's inhumanity to man, but Lucas and Spielberg have both pawned off worse drivel without paying too harshly for it (unless you look up some of Alec Guinness's comments on the dialogue he had to deliver in "Star Wars").
      I know nothing about Besson's adolescent years. Based on his age I know that he never read a "graphic novel" (they didn't really exist yet), but after watching "The Fifth Element" I can say with near certainty that he read plenty of comic books. If you don't already know, there's a big difference between the two, if not always in execution, then at least in aspiration. "Sin City" is a graphic novel movie, and pretty bad. "The Fifth Element" is a comic book movie, and pretty good.
      There's Bruce Willis as Korben Dallas, a super action hero whose cab driver secret identity throws him into the plot, and who has a few manga lying around his apartment just so you don't miss the point. There's uber-villain Zorg, the evil billionaire, a role that offers Gary Oldman the rare opportunity to play his second scenery-chewing psychopath in a row for the same director, and to have both characters get blown up by hidden bombs that they haven't time to defuse. There's Ruby Rhod, Chris Tucker's manic but spot-on vision of what "Entertainment Tonight" will undoubtedly devolve to in the (not-so-distant) future. There's the priest who really knows what's going on, there's the super girl with bright red hair, there's the art direction by French comic book creator "Moebius," there's...well... You get the idea.
      It's a comic book, people. Relax. Make some popcorn. Watch Bruce Willis do that one thing he's really good at. Have fun. Yeah, it's a French movie. But not that kind of French movie.