Any which way but Lucy...

I have, in my time, seen my fair share of preposterous Sci-Fi. I may not have seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion first hand but I have beleaguered my eyeballs with various and sundry neon-lit shenanigans, post-apocalyptic wastelands full of mutant lizard people, cybernetic organisms sprouting intelligence of their own and threatening life as we know it and countless time travel movies that invariably disappear up their own arses. I have during the course of my movie-going life built up a healthy tolerance for bullshit and I'm usually pretty good at suspending my belief if the story is a decent ride. Don't get me wrong, I really love picking up the tiniest little thing and hammering on it until there's barely anything left. After all isn't that really why we're all here?

I understand that not everything has to make sense and get wrapped up in a nice little bow. Southland Tales is one of my absolute favourite movies and I could watch it back to back, over and over. I will however be the first to admit it's baffling in places and spends a great deal of its run time so far up its own rear end it's wearing its own lunch as a hat. Predestination was a fantastic watch and to this day I'm not even remotely sure how any of the time travelling mechanics actually work. I just know that if you're going to end up simultaneously being your own Mother and Father, there isn't a lot Jerry Springer, Jeremy Kyle or Doctor Phil can do to help.

Lucy never seemed like it was ever going to reach that sort of level of head trip, but I had some halfway decent reports from friends so I went in pretty hopeful really. Loads of action, faces getting punched, Akira-esque psychic powers, what's not to like? Scarlett Johanssen has more than proved she's a capable action lead with the Avengers et cetera and honestly I think it's important to have female leads who do more than get their assets out at the drop of a hat or are simply daring rescue fodder. Luc Besson was also responsible for the Fifth Element which is fantastic. Lamentably, Monsieur Besson decided to (or was coerced into) making what really I can only describe as high concept Sci-Fi for plebs.

For me, the Golden Rule of Sci-Fi is that it needs to be believable, within the world you create. It can be mind-bending, physics defying guff, so long as it's being presented believably. Look at Sharknado in comparison to something like Deep Blue Sea. Neither one is exactly the pinnacle of cinematic endeavour, granted; I would argue Deep Blue Sea is the better of the two because it's more believable. Are scientists likely to fiddle with the genetics of animals to some nefarious and clandestine end? Yes. Is said fiddling destined to have unforeseen and likely terrible consequences? Absolutely. Are sharks that can solve puzzles and open doors more terrifying? Affirmatives across the board. I'm not wholly convinced that increasing their intelligence is likely to allow them to overcome physical limitations like not being able to swim backwards (it sort of implies that sharks are just too dumb to try it rather than physiologically incapable. That's cold man). I find it a little too difficult to believe that a tornado full of living, flying sharks is a likely outcome of anything other than one too many cocktails and a nose full of Bolivian Marching Powder at a writers retreat. Just taking two already lethally dangerous things and splicing them together doesn't necessarily make them exponentially more deadly. It just ends up being stupid, I get all het up about it and everyone suffers unnecessarily. 

It used to be a well-known scientific fact that human beings only used 10% of their cerebral capacity. It has since been demonstrated as a heaping pile of horse shit. Therefore by the transit of properties, Lucy is entirely predicated on the grassy excrement of farmyard animals. We know the set-up all too well; American party girl Lucy if forced into becoming a drug mule after some shady dealings by her boyfriend and some clumsy allegorical nature documentary clips about cheetahs which I'm sure we're well intentioned but are just distracting lying patronising: thanks for letting me know Lucy is the prey animal in this scenario Luc, I'd have never have guessed from just watching her be kidnapped by gun-toting Yakuza. 5 minutes later she's a drug Mule with an unknown substance sewn into her abdominal cavity; one intercontinental plane ride, a casual sexual assault and a bit of a shoeing further down the line and our heroine has the spilt contents of her internal cargo coursing through her veins. Well at least they got on with it.  

It may or may not surprise you to find out I'm not a trained medical professional. Nor am I a forensic scientist, pharmaceutical chemist or any sort of pathologist. I am however pretty sure that if you release a massive amount of any substance directly into the soft tissue surrounding your guts, you really are asking for trouble. If that substance happens to be a previously unknown narcotic, I'm going on record tight now to tell you: you're boned. It's OK though, because it turns out that today's party drug of choice is a synthetic growth hormone that induces foetal brain development et voila! I stopped caring at exactly this point. More accurately the point where the burst bag causes Lucy to involuntarily defy gravity whilst it takes effect. You know, before it opens the previously unused 90% of her brain. That technically she already is using. Ahem. Cue a countdown as Lucy uses more and more of her brain capacity which variously allows her to read minds, learn languages in seconds, control phones and televisions, instantly put people to sleep, change her hair colour, travel through time and finally turn herself into a memory stick containing all knowledge of everything ever. I shit you not. 

There was loads of potential here with the cast and director but the concept and the science behind it was just so flawed from the start it's a bit like starting the Olympic 100 metres in the stands. It's comfortable enough but ultimately a bit pointless; where you might expect meticulously choreographed fight scenes we have Lucy making people float out of reach. The epic gun battle at the end is pretty standard fare and interrupted far too frequently by shots of Lucy sat in a chair as still as possible so the animators have an easier time of it turning her into black goo. Not the same black goo as Prometheus I assume, this is apparently the black goo that matter transforms into when you reach nearly 100% of your cerebral capacity and want to build a PC. It might not even be goo, but it looks like goo and how often do you get to use the word goo in a sentence? Not often I'll warrant, unless you work for a toy company or have small children. Overall it's a frustrating experience and feels like they started with the concept of an all-powerful heroine with a bunch of powers and had to work backwards to try and fill in the blanks as to how. Strangely, I might have been able to forgive the finale, (which really genuinely boils down to Lucy=God=Memory Stick) if the build-up hadn't been the super-frustrating, pseudo-scientific and pseudo-action mess that it was. As it stands though, Morgan Freeman gets a decent sized memory stick that in a couple of years will just end up filled with obsolete spreadsheets and illegally downloaded episodes of  some random Netflix Original series.