Surreal entertainment with some glaring flaws

Rating: Null/10 (23 January 2015)

We were excited to see Lucy based on some excellent reviews. We made this a prime-time movie night selection as soon as it was available for rental. It was somewhat entertaining, but ultimately disappointing. Our take is that the first half was fun and curiously "realistic" sci-fi. The concepts explained by Morgan Freeman were very crisp and enlightening (although a bit academic.) We were quite engrossed in both the academic and gangster story lines. About 2/3 of the way through, the film "jumps the shark" with some absurd sci-fi leaps. We would give the first half of the film a solid 8 and the second half of the film a 5. Average is a 6.5, so we'll round this up to a 7. This film had great potential to reveal some breakthrough new ideas, but it lost its way.