The best critics' slams of 'Valerian': 'It really is THAT bad'
It's not that movie critics hate Valerian, the eye-popping sci-fi adventure starring Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, which, as of Friday, was pulling in a just-fine 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Critics just seem baffled by the Luc Besson film, which USA TODAY called one of the summer's riskiest Hollywood gambles "with no big-name actors, a hefty $180 million budget and out-there source material that's little known to U.S. audiences."
From the looks of the internet's harshest reviews, Valerian "is really that bad." Read a sampling below.
"To say that Valerian is a science-fiction epic doesn’t quite do it justice. Imagine crushing a DVD of The Phantom Menace into a fine powder, tossing in some Adderall and Ecstasy and a pinch of cayenne pepper and snorting the resulting mixture while wearing a virtual reality helmet in a Las Vegas karaoke bar. Actually, that sounds like too much fun, but you get the idea."
"The Razzies don't need to wait until the end of the year to anoint a winner for 2017. The Golden Turkey Awards should be republished with a new cover. Euro-trash is back, while sci-fi will need to lick its wounds for a while.
"Dane DeHaan, who has starred in two of the most egregiously bloated misfires of the year with A Cure for Wellness and now this, should do a couple of indie films, while Cara Delevingne needs to learn there is more to acting than smirking and eye-rolling. Rihanna should pretend this never happened. And the Hollywood studio chiefs can breathe easy that, this time, at least, they'll escape blame for making a giant summer franchise picture that nobody wants to see since this one's a French import."
"Most glaring of all is an unbearably clunky stretch of the film involving Rihanna as a shapeshifting and bizarrely (not in the good way) wisecracking burlesque performer, and a horde of slobbering and stupid aliens who are, rather uncomfortably, clad in tribal garb that looks a bit too much like stuff that’s worn here on Earth by non-white people. It’s an ugly portion of the movie, in many senses, while Besson’s whopping $180 million budget runs thin and the narrative slows to a crawl."
"Dane DeHaan stars as Major Valerian, a special-ops agent assigned to maintain order in the universe, or at least in the human territories. It's a big job for this sylph-like manchild and despite numerous feats of derring-do, never once does he seem remotely up to the task. DeHaan can act: Check him out in Chronicle, The Place Beyond the Pines and Kill Your Darlings. But here, he's mostly asked to joke and flirt until stuntmen take over for the dangerous stuff.
"But if it's hard to root for Valerian, it's even harder to muster up interest in his partner, Sergeant Laureline. As played by model Cara Delevingne with a smirk that just won't quit, Laureline is way ballsier than Valerian, who still looks in need of a mother's love. She can pose and preen like an expert in her space gear – and those eyebrows! – but there's no there there. In place of characters, we get attitudes. Sorry, that just doesn't cut it."
"Too bad Valerian himself is such a dud. Written as a kind of cocky intergalactic lothario, Valerian ought to be as sexy and charismatic as a young Han Solo, though Chronicle star Dane DeHaan — so good in brooding-emo mode — seems incapable of playing the kind of aloof insouciance that made Harrison Ford so irresistible. Despite holding the rank of major, Valerian looks like an overgrown kid, overcompensating via an unconvincingly gruff faux Keanu Reeves accent (with the questionable dye job to match)."
"The cameo to end all cameos comes from Rihanna as a burlesque performer — complete with stripper pole — an appearance every bit as gratuitous as that sounds, bringing the movie to a grinding halt.
"Not that there's really much momentum to stop. While the look is vibrant and the design imaginative, Besson undermines the action with the cheeky tone, which isn't clever or funny but does manage to rob the film of any semblance of jeopardy. The result is an exercise that simultaneously calls attention to how much the producers spent translating this vision to the screen and what a colossal waste that feels like."
Rihanna, Cara Delevingne smolder at the 'Valerian' premiere