Silly, but quite entertaining nonetheless

Rating: 7/10 (27 July 2014)

...and then, of course, there's Scarlett Johansson, without whom the movie would have been less fun. She is a talented actress, but also has that intangible screen presence that fills every frame and makes it impossible to look away. Even with all the CGI, it is still her movie.
She gets to play a broad range here, from vulnerable, none-too-bright young woman living in Taiwan with a roommate (Taiwan? Why there? We're never told...) to a super brainy, other-worldly creature. At any rate, in this very creative version of a 'drug deal gone bad' she winds up exposed to a new illicit agent that is being set up as the new 'it' drug to take over hipster-world; however, she is exposed to a mega dose and that has her mental capacities increased ten-fold. In her new, enlarging brain capacity state (it shows her capacities at various stages of increased percentages of neural function) she is capable of feats any super hero would envy. It's just fun to watch.
But please do not expect a biology lesson from Morgan Freeman, who is again brought back in his recurring Hollywood role as The Smartest, Wisest Man on Planet Earth (only his names change) who is a major neuroscientist here with theories that are pure dreck . At any rate, he is given so much bad biology to recite that I winced several times ('we only use 10% of our brain capacity; dolphins use more than humans; cells have two choices: become immortal or divide'). Yuk.
And late in the movie, he is meeting with five other world-class neuroscientists in Paris, anot one is a woman. I have a daughter who is a neuroscientist and there are many women in the field-- what kind of BS is this in 2014? (And I'm a guy--but it just seemed so 1957 it irked me).