Lucy Review
Ever wonder what Limitless would have been like if Bradley Cooper had breasts and was a hot(ter) chick? Wonder no more.
Before I get into this I want to talk a bit about these reviews. I have been evaluating my time and what the results are. These reviews take hours to write and since I don’t get a lot of readers anyway I think I am going to cut back a bit. No other reviews I read go as deep into it as I seem to so I will follow their lazier example. Maybe I’ll get even more readers? Who’s to say. I will also focus on the fun parts I enjoy: seeing the film, complaining about Hollywood, bitching about my love life, coming up with bizarre entertainment conspiracies, unlikely analogies, and making an ill informed recommendation based on zero qualifying experience. The parts I will skip are the ones that take a lot of time and aren’t even that much fun to read: detailed story recap, listing every actor along with a filmography, and my overly complex stars and black hole rating system. I’ll go to the traditional 0-5 star rating system but instead of stars let’s call them Phasers in honor of my love of Star Trek.
So Lucy. Of the laundry list of things I am disappointed with in Hollywood and the crap they keep pushing out (oh, yeah, I’m definitely not giving up on the subtle biological, scatological, and obscene jokes) has to be the decline of certain movie producers I used to respect. Highest on this list is probably Luc Besson (Wait a minute! Luc + y = Lucy! You clever egomaniac!), whom I used to think was one of my top guys in film but now I approach his movies with the same enthusiasm a finalist in a hot dog eating contest would his 47th hot dog: it probably has some good flavor were this the first one but honestly all you have is an amalgam of random animal parts and rat excrement just like the last 46 and your reward for finishing will be…another hot dog.
So what makes this movie different for Luc is that instead of mining his own old movies in hopes of finding an unused gem he is now ripping off other people’s movies. This film is pretty much the Buddhist female lead version of Limitless with a super healthy dose of the Matrix and a big chunk of Akira floating around like a beer bottle in a swimming pool. Also for some reason Tree of Life dominated the visuals. Since Limitless was kind of a rip off of Charly (which was based on Flowers for Algernon) that makes this the least imaginative story premise ever. I’d also like to point out that the theory that we only use 10% of our brain was developed by two nutjobs in the 1890’s and has since been disproven over and over again. The “science” behind this film is at all times laughable.
The filming was bizarre as well. When I was in college I took a video class and as an exercise in editing our instructor had us make a found footage music video. In other words we pulled video footage from moves and TV and mashed it all together in time with the music. Inevitably it turned into a bizarre incoherent mess but as a training exercise it was pretty good. I guess Luc is enrolled in that class right now as his movie has all kinds of bizarre cut scenes to animals having sex and the like. Whenever Morgan Freeman starts talking about the “science” behind what is going on the film dives off into the most literal imagery possible. If he’s talking about primitive man we see a Neanderthal. If he’s talking about survival of the fittest we see a tiger eating a gazelle. If he’s talking about another crappy Luc Besson movie we see a clip from the Family (joking, of course although on some levels not really).
The part that really sucked about this film was the protagonist. Have you ever wondered why no one has ever done an action film with God as the action hero? You know, God goes into Berlin with an MP40 to kill Hitler, or works to stop a terrorist plot to blow up a Walmart in small town America? It’s because an all powerful, all knowing protagonist is dead boring! God wouldn’t have to shoot Hitler. He could just miracle his ass to Hell with a snap of his finger. The same problem plagues this film. The only time this film is remotely interesting is at the beginning when Lucy is just a slutty party girl who gets into trouble with the Chinese mafia. At that point I was interested, but as soon as she starts evolving she goes from zero to unstoppable and ends up looking mostly bored as she miracles herds of people unconscious. At one point she has about 100 French policemen keeping her alive by catching bullets with their foreheads and all I could think was “Why doesn’t this lazy bitch dedicate one iota of her super powers to kill the bad guys and save the lives of the guys who are dying to save her?” 
I was hoping she would be like a super hot karate chick beating the hell out of people but honestly even what little of that there was got dull as she proved she could just snap her fingers and make stuff happen (Karate Kid image courtesy of the Karate Kid t shirt category).
Also this movie seems to imply that all humans are 15% God and all we have to do is get that last 85% of our brain going to turn into Dr. Manhattan. More stupidity.
So would I recommend this film? Meh. Probably not. If you have a thing for Scarlett Johansson (and really, who doesn’t) maybe but don’t expect to see any skin. The most you see is her bare midriff but since she is bleeding from it it’s not much of a turn on (unless you have serious issues). Her acting starts off OK but gets more wooden as the film progresses, making her look incredibly bored, an attitude I was mirroring. Morgan Freeman was pretty much the comedy relief and the action completely worthless in the face of the omnipotence. If you should find yourself in a hospital bed and this film is playing you wouldn’t want to risk further injury looking for the remote control but otherwise I’d say skip it. 1 Phaser.
the Infamous Dave Inman
Twitter: @Nerdkungfu
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