Great as long as you don't use more than 5% of your brain

Rating: 7/10 (9 December 2016)

This movie is a terrifically entertaining popcorn action flick that could probably benefit from a little less pretension and a little more common sense. But if you go into this movie just looking for a stylish action flick, it's fun.
The movie is based on that old myth that humans only use 10% of their brain, and tries to imagine what someone was like who could maximize their brain usage. When an ordinary woman named Lucy accidentally absorbs a huge amount of a new drug, her brain starts ramping up and she becomes, as the percentage increases, a super soldier, a superhero, and a god.
The movie is slick and stylish. It's often gimmicky, as in a scene where Lucy's first meeting with some bad people is intercut with wilderness footage, but it all works quite well.
This is the sort of movie you could really pick apart. The problem is not that the 10% brain thing is BS, which doesn't bother me at all, but that the movie is often sloppy in its internal logic. For example, Lucy types on a computer and she's so fast that hundreds of windows are opening and closing, but a laptop is not mechanically capable of that speed. And if you accept that Lucy is using her mind to control the PC, then WHY IS SHE TYPING? And no matter how souped-up Lucy's brain becomes, it wouldn't allow her childhood brain to have taken in the sort of data she recalls.
The movie is silliest when it has Lucy describe what it's like to be a super mind. There's a lot of talk about memories and sensitivities and time that all sounds like what someone tells you when they're describing their acid trip. The truth is, if someone were that smart, they would probably have difficulty talking to us at all; we would be animals.
Still, it's lots of fun, and I do recommend it for all its flaws.