What I Really Think: Lucy

I went into Lucy with low expectations.  The meme that people only use some small fractional amount of their brainpower long ago wore thin on me.  The trailers and ads were clear Lucy was embracing this trope wholeheartedly.  So I braced for that fact going in.  I had hoped the action and the exploration of someone becoming super smart and powerful would make up for the weak premise.  Unfortunately it failed to rise above its own weak premise.   

The movie still had its strong points.  The first act is quite good and her getting caught up in this drug deal is very interesting.   The only problem was you already knew from the trailers where all that was going, so there wasn’t really any suspense.  I also liked that her mission became passing on her knowledge.  That’s a good message, but I’m not sure if that’s the message of the movie overall.  The film definitely had a message it was trying to convey, but I’m not sure what it was.  

Unfortunately, I felt like I saw most of the interesting bits of action and her abilities in the trailer.  And I constantly had to choke down my reflex of seeing the science errors in the movie.  Ultimately the movie was predictable and didn’t really have enough interesting things happen along the way.   And the character of Lucy once she becomes smart really doesn’t engender much sympathy.  The concept of someone getting smarter is really interesting, and I think there’s a lot of really interesting concepts to explore there.  But this movie doesn’t explore them.  

I would rate Lucy fairly low on the scale of movies I’ve seen this year.  If you think you’re interested because it looks like some fun superpower action I’d encourage you to think twice before going.