Lucy

    So I was going to wait till I was done with Peter Pan Predicaments to review current films again, but then I saw Lucy...Although I don't think I can even begin to properly criticize this film, it is a special kind of bad. A bad of unfathomably stupid writing, an artistic style that consists of boring imagery and way too obvious symbolism, and beyond uninteresting "I'm just doing this for the paycheck" acting. I don't know where to start with this, seriously everything is wrong.

    Well let's start with the beginning. Right off the bat, it's a weird movie. The movie goes through human evolution in broad strokes, then proceeds to basically rip off Koyaanisqatsi by showing sped up images of people walking around and doing their jobs to imply how we've ruined society, except then the moral gets narrated over the montage by Scarlett Johansson (main character Lucy) because the audience is stupid and doesn't know how to think and analyze for themselves, I guess. This gets paid off, well I think it's the pay off at least, in a pretty stupid way, and has almost nothing to do with the plot of the film, so don't worry if you still don't get it.
    After that, the real film starts as we smash right into Lucy having a discussion with her new boyfriend Richard (Pilou Asbaek). Richard is fairly unintelligible, but the basic gist is that he forces her to trade off a suitcase to his boss because he's afraid of doing it himself, not telling her what's in it. She goes in and it seems Richard's boss is about to come down to get it, when suited henchman come in, kidnap her and the case and kill Richard. This is interspersed with occasional quick cuts to some of that way too obvious symbolism. Like when Richard is trying to convince Lucy to go in with the case, the movie cuts to a mouse about to go for the cheese in a mouse trap (get it?). Or when the henchman kidnap Lucy, it cuts to a gazelle being attacked by cheetahs (GET IT?). This touch disappears after this scene, which thank god, but proves pretty quickly that this movie's style only extends far enough to suck the audience in with how "edgy" and "intellectual" it is without actually following through. Although you'll be wishing for at least the originality of these moments later on. The potential of a creative visual style that would match the new and exciting perspective the character gains is squandered by becoming boring CGI with the most average sci-fi look.
    Continuing with the plot, Lucy is forced to open the briefcase by the drug lord, which we discover contains sacs of a synthetic drug. She then gets the sac put inside her body and is told she will become a drug mule. It's the only scene that's tense and also a bit darkly comedic and also the last we'll see of Scarlett Johansson caring about her performance, so I'm glad I savored this scene.
    Lucy gets put in captivity and at one point where she gets kicked by one of her captors, the bag tears and the drug enters her system...and this is where the film goes from flawed to... I just sat for here 10 minutes seriously thinking of a word to describe it and couldn't think of anything that works for this film. Indescribable doesn't even work when it comes to this caliber of ineptitude. The drug causes her to slowly gain control of her brain, since humans only have control of 10% of their brains. This fact is given to us by Morgan Freeman, who plays a scientist who's only job is to expose information about brain capacity, foreshadow Lucy's case in the beginning, and be yet another person for Lucy to monologue to about the movie's philosophical ideas. You can probably figure out why I won't talk about him much.
    Lucy getting more control of her brain "slowly" gives her god like powers and knowledge and "slowly" takes away her human emotions. The "slowly's" are in quotes for a reason. Because it doesn't happen slowly, really. Maybe there's a 10 minute process where she gains her powers, but really she gets that unlimited power over herself and others, as well as limitless knowledge, pretty quickly and there's not much transformation. As for emotional transformation...what emotions? Lucy says at one point that she's gradually losing her humanity, but I guess she's a complete liar because literally the first scene where the drug has entered her system she's killing the drug lord's henchman, taxi drivers, and completely innocent patients while their in surgery without any hesitation or remorse. Not to mention her voice and mannerisms instantly turn to a robotic monotone. Neither the script nor Johansson present any kind of emotional journey or inner struggle with what's happening.
   That leads me to my next point, actually: There is zero conflict. She doesn't struggle with these newfound powers and the negative side to it all, or show any fight against what's happening to her, or show a want to stay human. There's this one scene where difficulties begin to arise, where she begins to disintegrate, but instantly solves that and it's never brought up again. Then there's the whole 10 seconds that the movie spends showing Lucy's struggle with trying to stay human. There's this cop guy with the personality of styrofoam that starts going around with Lucy, "helping" her when she clearly doesn't need the help. When he finally asks her why she's been carting him around, she responds by saying that she needs him there to remember human feelings again. And that's literally all we get about any sign of humanity or dimensionality, those two little moments.
    The lack of internal conflict wouldn't be so bad, it is after all only an 89 minute movie, so there might not have been the time, except there's no real external conflict either. The only antagonists in the movie are a bunch of gun wielding drug lords, and since it's established pretty early on that Lucy has unlimited control over others, there's no tension. The whole movie is her, along with pointless one dimensional cop guy, going around killing the bad guys without any struggle and displaying ways her powers are awesome for the audience. It's really just running out the clock till the end. Lucy can do anything to anybody at anytime and figure out any problem she needs to without putting in any actual effort. No internal conflict, no external conflict, there's nothing interesting driving this movie forward.
    So then, after the movie drags into it's 100th hour of Lucy being a "badass", the movie gets to it's climax. Her objective throughout most of the film is to get to this university where Morgan Freeman and some other guys in lab coats are; so she can share her newfound knowledge with them. I guess she can't just do that over the phone or facetime, and I also guess teleportation just isn't included in those unlimited powers. So she gets there and while the villains and some cops are outside shooting at each other, she time travels and sees Times Square throughout the centuries in a kinda visually interesting scene, but it's too late to get me to care. Then she ends up in front of Lucy, you know, the creature from millions of years ago that was discovered with a much fuller skeleton than ever found before? Then Lucy, sitting in her chair above apeman Lucy, sticks a hand down and points out a finger, and apeman Lucy sticks a hand up and points out a finger, their fingertips about to touch (GEEEEEEEETTTTT IIIIIITTTTT!?!?!?!?!?) when Lucy disappears.
    She gets back to the lab and explains the piece of information to the lab coat guys that will relieve mankind and answer all of our questions: that mathematical and scientific measurements society has created are false (one plus one doesn't equal two) and time is the only true measurement. There's your payoff for the beginning. Time has had nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and anyways people do focus on time as a pretty big measurement anyway, so really this whole deep monologue is pretty pretentious. I can't imagine anyone actually feeling enlightened by this.
    And if you still honestly care by this point and aren't just waiting for the credits to start rolling, her brain reaches 100% and she basically turns into god, then the movie ends with one final ego-stroke. Johansson states that "life was given to us a billion years ago. Now you know what to do with it", which I guess means this movie thinks we need to focus on time more? Yeah, the pretense is really frustrating, but that only scratches the surface of the wrong in this movie.
    The writing is terrible. The conflict isn't a real conflict, the inner battle and any sign of humanity gets slightly hinted at then completely dropped, the characters that aren't Lucy or the drug dealers just stay in the movie long after they're needed and contribute nothing, there's no transformation as Lucy gains powers and loses emotions, the list of wrongness in the script goes on for miles.
    The acting is terrible. Johansson starts off being engaging, but once the drug sets in, she instantly becomes this robot with no emotion instead of transforming into that, and becomes completely uninteresting. On top of that, most of the other actors clearly don't care because their characters are mostly pointless and one-dimensional, and they know it.
    The visual style is terrible. The effects are uncreative and the symbolism is incredibly less smart than the movie thinks it is.
    And it never becomes so bad it's good. Lucy isn't inept enough, so it can convince you it's a real film, but it's too inept to actually be an enjoyable film. It ends up being really boring, and that is the worst crime a film can commit.