Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS  (2017)  ¢ ¢
    D: Luc Besson
    Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, Rihanna,
    Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu, Rutger Hauer
"Star Wars" meets "Avatar", more or less, in a sci-fi adventure about a couple of young space commandos whose mission is to, well, it's not entirely clear what their mission is, except to get into one scrape after another and look good doing it. So there are these creatures that look like an overfed Jar Jar Binks, and an even more grossly obese thing that could be the brother of Jabba the Hutt, and a race of skinny, peaceful, supersmart aliens, and a commander (called "The Commander") played by Clive Owen, who blew the aliens' planet to smithereens a while back, and now wants to kill the remaining aliens, who just want their planet back. Oh, and there's this little iguana-like creature that shits pearls, which comes in handy if, you know, you're running low on pearls. The visuals are cool. The storytelling's juvenile. The leads are attractive but bland. Rihanna does an eye-catching number as a shape-shifting pole dancer in a scene that makes you wonder whether maybe Besson didn't wish he was working with an R rating instead of a PG-13. Ethan Hawke appears briefly as Rihanna's pimp and gives the movie's most enjoyably crazed performance.