Edit: Bit of an artistic flair on these responses. It was shit but it was French, it was shit but it was meant to be... etc
Chased by relentless cliches, a chaotic malevolence that cannot be comprehended (but understands your deepest weaknesses), crushing inequality, and an androgynous Chris Tucker, the hero and heroine are plagued by corporatism gone amok, and use the system against itself to save the world. It is, quite simply, Willis' and Oldman's finest movie to date among dozens of fantastically acted movies.
A goddess can choose to save the universe. What's the use of saving life when you see what you do with it? One of the deepest mysteries in the universe. Answer that, and you have the ethos to lift others and champion the big causes out of the jaws of ennui and nihilism.
As such it is fundamentally big, bombastic, and kind of stupid in much the same way Marvel’s films would be in later years. Except with a French flavor. All it’s ambitions lie in being cool-looking and kind of absurd, not in telling a subtle story full of well-acted characters. French films have a reputation in the US for being smart and classy and this film was maybe less stupid than an American comics adaptation but it is still kind of fundamentally a big, stupid, gorgeous film. The Frenchness left a lot of people underwhelmed because they were not ready for a big stupid comic book romp. I’d read enough Moebius when it came out to know what groove it was aiming for so I loved it.
I don’t know how it holds up in a modern world full of big stupid leave-your-brain-at-the-door American comic-book blockbusters. It was a nice taste of that sort of thing in a stand-alone package.
Also you might want to try watching some movies that are not big stupid sci-fi things before giving up on the entire medium? Find your local art house if you live in a decent-sized city, subscribe to their newsletter and spend an evening seeing something that sounds interesting now and then. They’ll probably have a few of the big dumb effects showcases too, because those reliably bring in money, you can continue to ignore them in favor of stuff like “we have this amazing psychedelic animated fairy tale from Hungary for one week only” or “a loving remaster of one of David Lynch’s twistier works”.
In a way it was a lot like my first time watching Spirited Away (a far better film) knowing next to nothing about Japanese culture. Everything about it seemed new and fantastical and like a wholly new setting. I can’t recapture that feeling now that I know a lot more Japanese culture, but The Fifth Element can retain that sense of a real but truly alien place and culture.
> but I believe that after Terminator 2 and Jurassic park there was garbage for a few years
But lion king, toy story, pulp fiction, shawshank redemption, fargo, forrest gump, etc were released soon after jurassic park. Garbage isn't the word I'd use to describe these movies.