Lucy

Dustin: 1 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5 stars Average: 2 of 5 stars (Canary on life support)

Dustin: Lucy is the second steaming turd Universal Studios has taken in our theaters in the past year (the other being 47 Ronin). The film features characters the audience doesn’t care about in a ridiculous premise based on a false idea (humans only use 10 percent of their brains) and that by accessing more of our “cerebral capacity” we’ll somehow be able to break the laws of physics.

Nick: When watching Lucy my mind kept comparing it to another science-fiction movie from this year: Transcendence. I understood immediately why I was enjoying Lucy while feeling forced to watch Transcendence. Lucy is molded with schlock. I never took it as wanting to be serious. This made me forgive all the factual errors. It helped even more that early on Morgan Freeman says it’s all hypothesis, not truth. Transcendence, on the other hand, was too serious while just using computer lingo as dialogue. Both movies had Morgan Freeman in common, probably to try and add validity to an idiotic idea.

Dustin: This wasn’t really a science fiction film. It was wannabe sci-fi. Transcendence had a cautionary tale about when science advances faster than humanity’s capacity to deal with it. This movie took a widely believed falsehood and had Morgan Freeman presenting his theories in an academic setting with serious people asking him questions. There was no science, only stupidity.

Nick: I find it amusing so many people can’t look beyond the stupid idea of a premise that is portrayed as true, when false, but can let giant alien robots fight each other on a distant planet while Mark Wahlberg is an inventor living in Texas (born and raised), but having a Boston accent. That you can look past, but this idea (just because some think it’s true) ruins this movie for you and many others.

Dustin: I have to disagree. I didn’t like Transformers either, but it didn’t pretend its premise was true. This movie continues to perpetuate a stupid idea that has long been disproven. The human brain consumes more calories than any other part of the body, we wouldn’t have evolved massive brains if we were only going to use 10 percent of them.

Clearly using more than 10 percent. (source: The Skeptics Guide to the Universe)

But, I don’t think that’s entirely why I couldn’t stand this movie. It occurred to me The Manchurian Candidate is another movie based on a false idea about the brain (humans can be programmed), but why is it that movie is a classic and still immensely enjoyable even knowing the premise is false, while this movie fails?

Nick: I don’t think this movie is saying that it is true. The film doesn't take itself seriously. It might just be asking what if that were the case. It’s an action sci-fi film, not a drama. There was no part in Lucy I took seriously. I also just found an article where Luc Besson is asked about all the people who are complaining about the science behind the premise and if Besson thinks its true that people only use 10 percent of their brains. His response is that it is absolutely not true.

Dustin: Knowing that sort of makes it worse. He’s not really asking, “What if?” Science already has the answer. I just couldn’t accept the movie on any level without agreeing to the premise. The answer to “What if humans used 100 percent of their brains?” Would be, “Normal-ass humans.”

Nick: What if what humans think is using a 100 percent of their brains is actually only looking at the limited potential, but in actuality the brain can be reprogrammed to increase its capacity of knowledge. What if?… Not saying it’s possible but what if?… that is kind of the first thought behind all sci-fi films.

Dustin: I think we have to agree to disagree. I wasn’t willing to ask “What if?” in this instance due to the stupid premise. So I couldn’t participate in the film at all.

But that wasn’t the only issue. What character are we supposed to identify with and root for? It can’t be Lucy. She starts out as a ditz, and then pretty much acts like a robot after she starts using her brain. We don’t have any characters we can identify with. So that also added to my boredom.

Nick: Do you always need a character to identify with? I can only think of one Luc Besson movie where I did and that was The Professional, but that was the only movie that had an real drama. I’ve enjoyed almost every film he has directed. The films are just mindless, fun entertainment with well-worked action scenes. Movies like District B13 and Lucy work for me because the films are less than 90 minutes and don’t try to be anything more than they happen to be.

Dustin: I think absent a believable plot, yes, you need characters you can identify with. You need Luke Skywalker and Michael Corleone. Even Taken had Liam Neeson’s character. While I can’t identify with a CIA officer with a thick English accent, I can identify with a father wanting to protect his daughter. That’s something. There wasn't a believable character in this movie.

Nick:  You use two characters from two of the greatest movies ever to make to make a point against an subpar film.

Dustin: OK. Remember that Antonio Banderas movie The 13th Warrior? Of course not, unless you were one of the 13 people (coincidence) who saw it. He was from Baghdad, but we could relate to him in his journey with the Norsemen because he was learned and more civilized. He was the “everyman” through whom we can experience the unfamiliar setting.

Anyone remember this?

Nick: So you are saying if Lucy were an every(wo)man you could relate?

Dustin: If Lucy acted like a normal person for at least a few minutes I could relate. I had nothing to latch on to here. Not even a sympathetic secondary character.

Nick: One of my favorite movies of the year, Under the Skin, which also stars Scarlett Johansson, is such an amazing experience, yet I wouldn’t say I connected to nor had any feelings for any character in the film. For me, having a character to latch onto, depending on the film, can make a movie better, but if the film lacks that I don’t think its necessarily think less of it. Some films don’t have to have a connection. Having said this, I think Lucy would have been better if we could have had more time with 10-percent Lucy rather than 20-to-100-percent Lucy. But if you can’t get past the premise then I don’t blame you for disliking Lucy.

Dustin:  If Luc Besson came out and said, “This movie took place entirely in Lucy’s mind while she was tripping on the experimental drug sewn into her belly,” I would rewatch it with a different frame of mind and might accept it then.

Also, what was at stake here? Yeah, she could die if she didn’t get her fix, but since I didn’t care about the character, that didn’t mean much to me. She is basically invincible by the time she confronts her enemies, so that took away any tension the scenes could have had. What if her genius was only temporary like the movie Charly? Or she lost her power like Edge of Tomorrow, which would have raised the stakes?

Anyway, after being a wet blanket throughout this review, I will say there was one detail in this movie I really liked. There was the scene where they dragged out a human guinea pig to test the drug on. He had somehow fallen captive to the gangsters. This idea was genuinely scary, and in line with Luc Besson’s better ideas from his other films where he shows a part of society decent folk don’t want to know about.

Nick: Although his character wasn’t fleshed out enough, it was nice to see Choi Min-Sik who played Oh Dae-Su in the original Oldboy. I loved what he did with the character he had to work with. He was legitimately scary until the protagonist is able to use 25 percent of her brain.

You are definitely not wrong in your complaints. Far from it. All the problems and questions you have I always ask when watching a movie with any sincerity, but since I could get beyond the premise and understand the tone, then I was able to shut off this old “10 percent” brain and enjoy this mediocre film.