Was gonna go see District 9 tonight but decided to watch The Fifth Element on t.v. with my gf, who didn't want to go out. Judging from what I read on the forums and what my friend who did see it tells me...I made a bad ****in move tonight.
Oh yeah.
The Fifth Element -7.5/10
It's one of those movies that blew my socks off when I first saw it, and continued to be a fondly remembered flick over the years. Though when I watched it again tonight (first time I've sat through the whole thing in a good bit of time) I think it falls under the category of one of those kinds of movies that you still enjoy years later but you see it more clearly than you originally did. A lot of stuff in this flick has gone on to be relished in newer sci-fi movies (the space resort, for instance, is very similarly reused in Wall-E, and the futuristic tech-slums in the urban locales was widely replicated in Idiocracy, only in even more of parody sense). That being said, when I first saw it I was really fond of some of the Bladerunner moments it has. And other novelties in this film still stand out...like the Multipass, the hilarity of the tin-foil walls that Leeloo jumps through, the ridiculous cop uniforms with the gigantic light on the chest, the multi-purpose gun that Gary Oldman uses, and of course the exaggerated fashion styles which all sci-fi movies need.
What hasn't lasted are things like the story (which is largely stupid, if you really pay attention to it), much of the music (besides the dark battle music that reappears a lot in the score and is cool, most of the music is kind of clunky and jarring). I also think Chris Tucker kinda steals too much of the movie. He's actually kind of funny (watching him act like a fruit basket DJ still amuses me) but he's overused a bit I think. When he shows up he effectively kills any illusion that the movie was trying to be serious.
I remember when I first saw it, I said to a friend something along the lines of "this one is gonna be remembered for a while." A little over ten years later, I gotta retract that a bit. It's not a landmark sci-fi flick or nothing. But it's fun. And it has Gary Oldman in it, and he's never bad.