5/10

Director Luc Besson is notorious for some terrible movies that he has either directed, produced, or written. His newest film Lucy is possibly the worst from a director always trying to make an artsy commentary about the human race. One of the biggest reasons Lucy is a terrible film is that for a scale so big, it will easily be forgettable in 2 years. Scarlett Johansson stars as the character in title. She is a woman who gets drugged after a gang deal gone wrong, and the drug allows her to use more than the normal 10% of humans. Lucy borrows a lot from the 2011 film Limitless. A film i liked one hundred times more than this horrible mess. The thing i liked most about Limitless as opposed to Lucy is that it’s an original idea, and it makes that idea relatable by doing things that we would do if we could unlock more of our brain. Lucy becomes sort of a superhero of sorts with the most insane of visuals. Everything from erasing life around her to controlling other human beings to becoming a computer system. I have watched films with far fetched ideas, but Lucy presents it to where it’s funny for all the wrong reasons due to vicious overacting. Johansson in particular i felt was miscast in this role. A lot of people will disagree with me here, but she only ever has one reaction to everything and that is her “I’m smarter than you, so i can treat you like an idiot” look. This makes the character hard for the audience to get a read on. Should we cheer for her because she is held prisoner in this drug? or should we go against her because there could be some very dangerous consequences to her using 100% of her brain? Besson never gives us a definitive answer, and like most art pieces he leaves it in the hands of the viewers. The cinematography and action scenes were done very well. Lots of CGI visuals that will make you feel like the first time you watched slowshot camera work in The Matrix. The way everything is shot is very eye popping, and that is why i feel like Besson has the ability to be a decent director. I get that he took a risk with a script that he really believed in, but he didn’t do himself any favors by giving us the motto “Humans are wasting their time in their lives”. I felt this way while i was watching this boring piece of slop. It’s a film that is part philosophical, part action movie that goes from mayhem to boredom and to insanity in an instant. 82 minutes clearly isn’t long enough to give the audience enough time to soak in what they are witnessing. It’s of course new ground to all of us, but we are never given scientific logic as to how she can do these things just because she unlocks more of her brain. We are supposed to just believe because hey it’s unfamiliar to us. I didn’t have a lot of faith going into this film because i sensed it as one of those trying to enlighten the audience into the ways we are negatively living our own life. The problem with that is even if i could unlock more of my brain, i would live more like Bradley Cooper in Limitless than i would Scarlett Johansson in Lucy. It’s amazing that Besson figures out a way to take one of the most popular female action stars currently and make her so unlikable in a script that doesn’t show off her best side. It’s not even the fact that Scarlett can’t do weird independent films because Under the Skin was a riveting watch. She was impactful in that film without barely ever talking. Don’t see Lucy in theaters, but if you feel like giving it a shot when it comes to DVD, then by all means. It currently holds a 50% on Rotten Tomatoes and i don’t think there is a better grade for it. You are either going to think this story is innovative or very hard to sit through. Lucy is a movie that pretends to be smarter than it really is. Frustrating and far from intellectually engaging