Last night I took a trip down memory lane and watched The Fifth Element for the first time in what I thought was over a year, but then when I looked at my list, it is actually 19 days short of a year (yes, I’m that kind of nerd that has kept a record of every movie he’s watched since the beginning of 2003 when the idea occurred to me). It seems I watch it once a year just to remind myself of how fun it really is.
Anyway, loser-ish-ness aside, I thought I would write a bit of review of it because I love it so much.
Something that I noticed last night, that seems to have gone unnoticed by me in previous viewings, was that the costumes were done by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Then it hit me: This movie is so camp! It’s a great futuristic, sci-fi adventure that sees a scantily-clad Milla Jovovich running around and kicking butt in order to save the world. In other words: Too much fun!
There are some brilliantly edited sequences that are incredibly entertaining. To a certain degree, it pokes fun that the whole ‘stop the death of every living thing’ type of film, where Bruce Willis’ character is even asked specifically to “save the world.” Then to have the entire climax to the film be narrated ‘live on air’ by the ridiculously over the top Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker) just leaves you smiling.
For a film that was made in 1997, it has held up against all the new developments in CGI etc. and is as entertaining now as it was at the time. Although now we can look back and laugh at Luke Perry’s top-billing casting for his 3 mins of screen time.
I even said last night that this is one that I need to replace with a blu-ray edition. It’s one I watch often enough to warrant a second buying, and the edition I own just won’t cut it anymore.
I know this review has said next to nothing, but really, if you haven’t seen it, you should. And if you have seen it, don’t you think it’s time to watch it again?
I have to agree, the movie is a lot of fun, but I think when you have as much orange in a movie as this one you have to be having fun, but I think it was a little bright in high definition and burnt my eyes. You are right on with the editing of the movie, it was done so well that the whole movie flowed from scene to scene, or in between two different scenes having the same conversation on different sides of the coins. The entire cast is awesome in the movie, even if I don’t like Chris Tucker, he didn’t ruin the movie, but he did make my ears bleed. (Now blind deaf and bleeding, can I have a smoke? With a reaaallllly long filter plz) I can’t tell you how many times in 15 years I have seen this movie, but I think it might be up around 100-200. I see it n the television and everything must stop so I can watch it again, and for a while it was my only reason for having a DVD rental service. (I hate buying movies when I do I never want to watch them again) I hadn’t really thought of it being more of a spoof movie until a while back, but it made it even better when I realized it. This is why it was the first movie I put into my queue when I set up my blockbuster @home account, after Netflix raised prices, I didn’t have any rental’s for movies so I decided since I work at DISH I would give the @home a shot. Before I even put The Fifth Element into my queue I looked through the 20 movie channels included and the on demand hoping it would be there but alas, sometimes I have bad timing because I didn’t find it, so I rented it and I have continued to get my $10 out of the plan every month, mostly with streaming movies.
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