Lucy

It is definitely not 100% acc-u-rat.

Director: Luc Besson
Writer: Luc Besson
Runtime: 1hr 30 minutes

Plot: A woman in China / Japan / Taiwan (never specified) gets pushed into being a drug mule for a mob boss. After a series of events happen she is able to unlock 100% of her brain.

What do I even say about this? It's such a half and half film. It's a good idea but just falls on its face, it's got a pretty good couple of leads but it does nearly nothing with them, it acts like it like it has something important to say but then...doesn't. There's a difference between leaving something open ended and just tagging on a "philosophical" ending.

Let's just get into it, positively speaking this was a short film, only 90 minutes meaning it didn't drain as much of my life as some other films, I felt blessed to have gotten to watch a film that's short but then while I was paying attention, the shorter run time meant that character development and building a connection between characters was sacrificed. All we know about Johansson's character Lucy, is that she dated the guy who got her into this mess for a week or something, she has exams coming up, doesn't speak the language of the land she's on and has a roommate who is an actor who also can't read the language of the land she's on. What do we know about Morgan Freeman's Professor character? That he's a professor who's written a fuck load of pages on the human brain and that he's Morgan Freeman. What do we know about the antagonist? Fuck all. That's a huge fucking problem, in order for us to root for the protagonist we have to make some sort of connection rather than just have exposition thrown at us. We need to relate to them and feel threatened by the villain but that's not what we're given here. We're given dull fuck characters with no connection to the audience, just exposition. Fuck character development right?

The plot? As I said before, it's a good idea, what could we achieve if we unlocked the full capacity of our brains? Problem is, this film explains it in a way that makes the audience feel like they're in a lecture rather than wanting to learn more about this myth. The science in this film is definitely not correct and in fact, the whole idea this film is based on has been debunked. Honestly, the biggest problem this plot has is wasted potential. It's rushed, giving us no time to fully understand what's going on, we just see Lucy go through this stuff and because her brain capacity has increased she knows what's going on with herself and yet...the audience doesn't really get an explanation. Actually no, I say that she knows what's going on but she both does and doesn't know what's happening, one minute she's all over her own case, she knows what's up and can deal with it, then at other points, she has no fucking idea what's occurring.

Lucy is such a problem as a character, as I said before we can't connect with her because we know nothing about her, yet what we do know is a problem. She doesn't know the language of the land she's on, we don't even know the land she's on. It looks like Tokyo, her roommate says she can't read Chinese and later in the film the French police guy gets a call from Lucy in Taiwan? Like??? Did I miss a scene telling me where I'm at or something? Did I have to read the script to know where I am? It's like playing a game of Where's Wally except I'm in the dark...and blindfolded...and I wasn't given the book. Another problem is just the way she deals with what's happening to her, anybody would be freaking out with no bounds. Nobody would be this calm, even with their brain capacity enhanced. She's just not a real person and that stresses me the fuck out. Lucy also says she has exams coming up, exams for what? What are your interests girl? What are you studying? What are you sacrificing? What do you have to lose? How did you go to your classes without knowing the language of the land you're on? Fuck.

I also have many many issues with Lucy's roommate, despite the fact that she's only on screen for like 5 minutes or so. She's an actor, apparently looking to make it...wherever she is, saying she can't read Chinese which...as an actor, script reading is a pretty important thing to have to do. No wonder she wasn't getting any callbacks, she's riding on her looks to get parts but honey, if you got the part then you'd have to read a damn script. Unless it was a silent film, but then wouldn't you have to be able to speak the language to be able to communicate with those on set? Bitch you gotta learn shit to get places, especially if you're living in a foreign country and can't read/speak the most common language there. I know I keep going on about that but it's important. Communication is important. Damn.

I'm aware I've just gone on and on about what a naff film it is due to the characters being bland and not knowing shit, but overall it's a well put together film with a good idea behind it, it's just too flawed for me to be able to enjoy it. If you can just switch off your brain and just look at this film and enjoy it for what it is then great! I'm a minority of people who apparently didn't like this according to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic which speaks something for my opinion but whatever.

Hope you enjoyed reading this, I know I went on and on about a couple of specific points but like, there's more stupid shit in this film that I couldn't get into or I'd lose a brain cell. I'm gonna leave you with this quote from the film's main character when she thinks she's about to die and speaking to her mother on the phone, peace out guys. Quote: "I remember the taste of your milk in my mouth."

This was also a requested film and if you wanna request something for me to look at then drop a comment here or hit me up on any contact method listed on my Contact info page and I'll put whatever it is on my list for next month, unless it's already on my list for this month but y'know.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.