Lucy (2014) *

I'm pretty late watching this movie, but that's because I didn't want to pay for it. Reason #1, the science is bogus. The whole 10% thing had been refuted a while ago. I remember when it was all the rage, I think it was the late 80s, or early 90s, at least where I am from. I was a kid, and we were talking about it during a break at school with my friends. Not really a topic for 10-year-olds, but I was weird like that. What I can't remember is when I knew it was stupid. We now do know, there is no part of the brain going unused, or not up to its potential. I'm not going to go into details here, let's just say that when I saw the trailer of this movie, I found it weird how they could use something so archaic.

The reason why I did watch it was the reviews. They were pretty good, and promised excitement, good acting. I didn't really get either. The story is quite simplistic. Much of it is taken up by Morgan Freeman narrating. Now I like his voice as much as anyone, but the substance was sometimes face-palm worthy. Also, ooookay, I was waiting for something interesting to happen, and it just never did. Maybe if I had actually believed that whole premise of the movie, but since I know it's bogus, I was mostly rolling my eyes. It's not that I haven't seen fantasy or sci-fi that had unrealistic elements to it. However, this time, it felt more like listening to some Christian apologist speak in one of the debates I so love. Totally baseless, junk science. I just couldn't let myself get lost in a fantasy.

Maybe if the story actually had a story. It was so cliché, simplistic and predictable, the credits rolled, and the first thing that came to my mind was: "that was it?" I want to go up to Luc Besson, shake him, and ask him how he could have made something so boring. It reminded my of those sci-fi shorts that were really just introducing a concept, or an idea. However, those are not fit to be made into movies. They're dry. Maybe he was trying to do that? This from the same guy who made one of my favourite sci-fi movies of all time The Fifth Element. I must have seen that one a dozen times. I'll work very hard at forgetting that this mundane thing was also done by him.

I saw praise for Scarlett Johansson. She plays the lead character, Lucy. I guess if you can get points for spending the majority of the film with a completely blank expression, then it's okay. Though for that they could have just used Kristen Stewart. She has that down to an artform. Yeah, I'm being sarcastic, just in case you haven't read any of my reviews for her movies.

Morgan Freeman is also on the poster. He narrates. He asks questions. He stands around a lot. He sometimes sits. I don't think he was used to his full potential either. Not that people wouldn't enjoy him reading the telephone book, but really...

So the story is simple, acting is not really required from the actors, so perhaps it has great fight scenes or special effects? No. Okay, there are brief moments when Lucy does something that looks cool. Like make guns fly into air. Would have been a wow moment in the 60s maybe. However, other than some people shooting up a bunch of places without much opposition is about as exciting or visual as this thing gets. I hope they didn't pay someone to come up with those fight scenes.

Overall, I couldn't find any redeeming factor to this movie that would make me actually want to watch it again, or recommend it to anyone. I didn't hate it. Really. Twilight I hated for various reasons. This I was more like shrugging and marking it off the "to be watched" pile. Crap science, lacklustre action, no real characters, ... I just don't see a point to what I watched for 90 minutes. I can't give it more than one star. I tried to give two, but really, there is just nothing good about this, I didn't enjoy anything about it. One star it is.