It has a bombastic quality to it, overloading audiences with well written interjecting conversations, wonderfully eccentric set design, eclectic surroundings, all topped off by the over-exaggerated characters like the tantrum-ous Zorg, endlessly chattering Ruby, the jittery priest character played perfectly by Holmes, and the literal incarnation of evil as a smoldering ball of death. Upon first viewing, it might be easy for audiences to think of the film as an unsuccessful attempt at a serious sci-fi action film, but it's during the second act that the comedy and flamboyance of the film comes through. On the topic of humor however, this is where the film truly shines. These contradictions leave it hard to tell what the true message of the film is, and whether or not these characters and themes are only put in place for comedic reasons, rather than intellectual societal commentaries. He, like most of Willis’s roles, is the gruff sarcastic average Joe - a cynical cowboy who has a heart of gold. It then throws in one of the queerest and openly flamboyant, gender-bending and transgressive character Ruby Rhod (a role played by comedian Chris Tucker, but which was originally written with Price in mind) that audiences rarely see even today in blockbusters, representing a vastly unrepresentative group of people, but then pairs this with the super masculine Bruce Willis, who plays the films action hero and love interest Korben Dallas. The biggest example is how, at its core, it is a story of a woman who holds the power to save all life, a strong, fearsome and capable heroine (so far so good), but is only able to do that if a man tells her that he loves her - and she’s barely ever fully dressed.
The film's biggest downfall is that it is almost progressive, a film before its time, but somehow manages to contradict itself into leaving audiences in a strange daze of whether or not what they are seeing is great, or outdated.
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