Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

Lucy

You know what Superman is without his severe kryptonite allergy? A colossal fucking bore, that's what. It'd be like knowing that Brody, Quint and Hooper were impervious to shark attacks before they went after ol' Chompy in Jaws. As soon as a character becomes all-powerful, there's no point in rooting for - or against - them. Their survival is inevitable, and that's about as entertaining as watching Amish porn. Witness The Matrix sequels.

In Lucy, Luc Besson's latest filmed-for-profit masturbatory fantasy about waify hot chicks kicking literally incredible amounts of ass (see also:  La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element, The Messenger and Colombiana), we haven't even hit the 20-minute mark before Scarlett Johansson's Lucy, by virtue of an unintended overdose of CPH4, goes all Dr. Manhattan (though with decidedly less schlong and only eyes of blue rather than the full-body look). From that moment on there's as much reason to root for Lucy as there is to pull for the Washington Generals, which is to say, none.

With a "What would happen if we could use 100% of our brainpower?" plot and a laughable overreliance on intercut stock footage, Lucy plays like some mongoloid Moreau cross between 2011's Limitless and a middle school filmstrip.  When Lucy's boyfriend asks her to deliver a mystery case to the sinister Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi doing his best Asian-infused impression of Gary Oldman's Stansfield from Leon: The Professional), we get a flash of a mouse sniffing around a mousetrap. 

If only Besson had substituted Admiral Ackbar yelling, "It's a trap!" all could have been forgiven.  Instead, that bit of foreshadow-bludgeoning is followed by, among way too many other examples, Jang threatening Lucy (cue cheetah stalking gazelle) and, later, Captain Exposition (aka Morgan Freeman) lecturing on evolutionary reproductive imperatives - because nothing screams "action movie" like lectures on evolutionary reproductive imperatives - (cue montage of animals fucking like it's the last orgy on Noah's ark).

Besson must have been in some sort of escargot-and-morphine-induced fugue state while he was making this shit-tacular.  How else can you explain that too much CPH4 is killing Lucy to begin with but the only solution when she starts to disintegrate into a cloud of bad CGI  (huh?!) is to gobble some more of the stuff?  Or that after accessing 20% of her brain she says that she can control her own metabolism but then completely fails to do so for the rest of the movie even when, you know, it could save her life?

In the past, Besson has been an innovator.  With Lucy, he's not merely an imitator, he's the most ham-handed of thieves.  And hey, Luc-y, if you're going to steal, have the good taste to steal from better material than Species and less recognizable films than 2001: A Space Odyssey, you  fromage-munchin', menage-a-trois-havin', surrender-lovin' Eiffel Towhore.

August 31, 2014