The Fifth Element, Fullscreen Edition DVD Review

Oddly, I never got to see The Fifth Element when it was in theaters, but made up for that with a DVD rental over the weekend. It turns out that The Fifth Element is a lot of fun, as long as you don't think too much about the plot. This French/American film is more about style than it is about substance.

The Fifth Element starts in Egypt in 1914, with an archeologist working in a crypt of some sort. Large ugly space beings soon appear and the crypt turns out to be more than it seemed. Events then shift 300 years into the future, where Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) is a former Special Forces officer now working as a cab driver in a very modern American city. Government scientists create/recover a space being, who quickly escapes and literally falls into Dallas' cab. Of course, this leads to an anti-grav car chase, where the good guy (Dallas) escapes the cops.

Meanwhile, in the back seat of the cab is Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), a "perfect being" who is the "fifth element" necessary to defeat the alien forces that will attack shortly. Leeloo is barely wrapped in some sort of Band-Aid costume, which certainly kept my attention on the screen. Dallas and Leeloo evade bad guys on Earth, then go to some holiday planet, where they collect the materials needed to defeat the aliens. As you might expect, this gives them plenty of opportunities to shoot things, blow things up and generally kick ass. It's mostly fun, if you don't slow down to think about how silly it is.

I enjoyed The Fifth Element, but it really is a silly movie. There's lots of humor and you can tell that the actors all had a great time. However, there's no real attempt to comment on the human condition -- it's just good guys beating the bad guys, with a (very!) pretty girl in the middle. It's been done a million times before, even if The Fifth Element has a great sense of style, a large wink of humor and lots of clever on-screen elements.

The Fifth Element has brief nudity and a bit of rough language, but it's all done in fun and is never salacious. I'd say this film is fine for anyone 15 and older.

I recommend The Fifth Element and give it 3.5 stars, rounding up to four. It's not really a four-star film, but three would be too low. If you like action, science fiction and clever film design, you will enjoy The Fifth Element.