Lucy – review

If you tossed Limitless with a dash of 2001: a Space Odyssey, and Akira with the character of Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen in a blender you would end up with something like Lucy. The movie is incredibly silly and you need to suspend a lot of disbelief to sit through it. The acting is by far the best part of the film. Scarlett Johansson at least attempts to bring in a decent show. I am just not sure if it is enough to save this movie.

Lucy, played by Scarlett Johansson, is living in Taiwan when the boy she is dating forces her to be a drug mule for some Korean gangsters.  The drugs are placed in her stomach to smuggle to another country. The contents leak into her stomach and rather than kill her they make her intelligence increase exponentially.  She must now come to terms with the fact that her brain is developing in new ways and is growing beyond humanity.

The biggest problem with this movie is that they expect you to swallow the premise that humans can only access 10% of their brains. This is so scientifically inaccurate that it is akin to having people go into space and being able to take off their masks to breathe normally.  I get that they need this idea for the premise of the movie but it asks a lot of the audience’s intelligence. 

Scarlett does a fine job performing for this part. Between Her and Under the Skin it has been really great to see what she brings to the table as of late. The problem is that she is given laughable dialogue. For example, there is a scene where she calls her mother and describes memories she has of being breastfed. It seemed like the intent was to draw emotions of sympathy for Lucy but all it got was loud chuckles from the audience. 

There are so many plot holes in this movie that you can just about park a car in them. Strange scenes are added just for the sake of being strange.  The beginning of the movie starts out with a hairy Neanderthal drinking water out of a lake. The same Neanderthal is shoehorned in later as Lucy, the first woman.  On the other hand, it is a Luc Besson movie and it does mean there is an element of cheese to be expected.

The bottom line is that Lucy is probably not worth seeing in the theaters. It is certainly worth a rental at the very least.  It is cheesy and should be enjoyed for that. It is science fiction and there are some fun aspects to it. It is a mediocre movie that was at least entertaining. Sometimes that is all we ask from a movie.