Long on fiction, short on science

Rating: 7/10 (11 August 2018)

"Lucy" is more wish fulfillment fantasy than anything else. Wouldn't be great if we all had God-like powers locked away in our brains just waiting to be released (kind of a metaphysical version of a letter from Hogworts). Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) experiences this cognitive renaissance when she is forced to mule an experimental drug hidden in her abdomen by a vicious Taiwanese drug-lord. The drug, a synthetic prenatal hormone, allows her to vault past human (and physical) limitations and archive 'The Highest Possible Level of Development'. She eventually meets up with Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman) a pseudo-scientist and expert on the quiescent 90% of our brain while an army of the nattily dressed gangsters search for her. A massive gunfight (borrowing heavily from The Matrix) accompanies a trippy extra-corporal experience (borrowing heavily from the 2001: A Space Odyssey). Energetic and entertaining, "Lucy" is best enjoyed using only the right-side 5% of your mental capacity, but if you have read some of the many fawning reviews on IMDB and expect to achieve enlightenment, I suspect that you will be disappointed.