Lucy (R)
02/08/14 21:59 Filed in: 2014
Starring: Scarlett Johansson
July 2014
This review was originally tweeted in Real-time from the back row of a movie theater and appears @BackRoweReviews. Though efforts were made to tease rather than ruin this movie’s memorable lines and moments, some spoilers may exist in the following evaluation. The original tweets appear in black, while follow-up comments appear in red. For concerns over objectionable content, please first refer to one of the many parental movie guide websites. All ratings are based on a four star system. Happy reading!
“Open your mind…open your mind!”
Wait, I thought this was Lucy, not Planet of the Apes.
Or 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
The crosscutting between humans and the animal kingdom is a clever conceit.
The National Geographic style nature scenes are a bit jarring at first, but they’re a unique way of depicting the primal side of humanity.
Immortality or reproduction. Why is it too much to ask for both?
Lucy dances on the ceiling.
Oh what a feeling.
Lucy mind-melds with her captor.
Why doesn’t she dispatch with him here and now? Ah, yes, because the villain needs to factor into the climactic showdown. Contrived!
The FX in the airplane bathroom are mind-blowing.
60%. The goons don’t stand a chance.
Maybe at 30% they’d stand a chance, but not at 60%.
A new generation of computer.
This one comes standard with tentacles.
Awesome retro time lapse effects...like watching “The Time Machine” in reverse.
The whole T-Rex thing was a bit staged, yes? I felt like I was in the 3D King Kong attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood.
Lucy meets Lucy.
Shouldn’t the universe implode at this point? Let’s ask Dr. Brown. He’ll know.
Final analysis: an intriguing premise that fails to live up to its groundbreaking promise.
Rating: 2 1/2 out of 4 stars. A thought-provoking sci-fi yarn with some amazing visual effects.
If the average human only uses roughly 10% of her brain, what capabilities would she possess if she could access 100% of her brain? An intriguing question…and a promising premise for this near future sci-fi actioner, which comes complete with all of the highly styled action sequences and pulse pounding chases we’ve come to expect from a movie directed by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element). Unfortunately, this high-concept story takes a radical left turn during the second half of the movie when a Limitless (2011) style cautionary tale morphs into a Transcendence-esque emergence event (the movie also has a heavy quotation of the 1960 version of The Time Machine). Using the above films as the ends of a spectrum, Lucy falls somewhere between Limitless, which is considerably better, and Transcendence, which is an awful mess that makes this film look like Inception (2010) by comparison (coincidentally, Lucy is the second so-so sci-fi yarn Freeman’s done this year…he also appeared in Transcendence). Ironically, just about the time Lucy starts to evolve the story begins to devolve…by the end, we’re left with a plot that’s been reduced to the consistency of a primordial soup, an image not lost on the movie. Aside from a head-scratching denouement (is that a 1 trillion GB flash drive?), the story line involving the Asian drug lord and his minions is extremely banal. Despite the enjoyment derived from watching Lucy surgically annihilating hoards of thugs, none of the fight scenes have any dramatic tension since the end result is a foregone conclusion—the multiple melees are tantamount to a group of Secret Service agents taking on a Jedi. However, if frenetic action scenes are the main motivation behind attending this movie, Lucy will serve its purpose…I suppose. In the end, the movie is a missed opportunity since its central conceit is so easily apprehended and universally applicable and a profound disappointment since its story is so formulaic and predictable. It really chafes that this could’ve been a great movie. Instead, Lucy is just a mildly intriguing action picture with A-list actors and a B grade story that required far less brain power to watch than it did to read this pedantic review.