Scarlett Johansson in a leading role was enough to make me check this one out.

What’s It About? A woman is abducted and exposed to an experimental drug that gives her limitless mental powers.

STRAIGHT UP: Not very good. Doesn’t take advantage of a cool premise. 4/10

What I Liked

The first act – The events leading up to Lucy’s abduction and exposure to the CPH4 drug had me on the edge of my seat. Johansson does her best acting during these scenes, too.

The car chase – It’s brief, but it’s pretty neat, showcasing a couple of tricks that I hadn’t seen before.

The 40% scene – When Lucy unlocks 40% of her powers, she begins to have trouble remaining corporeal. This provides the sole moment of dramatic tension that occurs after Lucy’s awakening, and it marks a point where the movie could have introduced a number of interesting internal conflicts.

What I Disliked

More than human, less than a character – Johansson decides to play Lucy post-awakening as the kind of meta-human who’s too busy thinking about the grand design to bother with things like emotions. I think that’s the worst way to go, because it’s impossible to empathize with a character like that. In Her, Johansson played a transcendent being who was also bursting with warmth and humanity – I don’t see why that couldn’t have happened again here.

Animal kingdom splices – Early on, as Lucy is being stalked by Korean gangsters, the film drops in footage of a cheetah hunting a gazelle as an obvious and unnecessary visual metaphor. Later, in another expository scene, there’s a cut to some rather graphic footage of animals mating. I have no idea what the director was thinking here.

Those poor bad guys – They don’t stand a chance against Lucy’s superhuman powers, so they might as well not even be here. I feel like they are barely part of the plot as is.

Arbitrary actions – There doesn’t seem to be any logic or consistency to what Lucy does later in the film. She proves that she can contact Prof. Norman (Morgan Freeman) anywhere, at any time, so why does she need to meet him in person? I guess because that journey makes up the backbone of the plot. Also, she has no trouble killing Korean gangsters most of the time, so why doesn’t she kill their boss, Mr. Jang, the first time she gets the chance? I guess because the screenplay wouldn’t know what to do if she did.

Pointless journeys through time and space – Late in the film, there’s an extended sequence where Lucy demonstrates her now-godlike abilities by visiting moments in time and observing the origins of the universe. It’s very flashy, but it doesn’t build into a plot development or provide new information about Lucy as a character. Given the scene’s length (several minutes), it felt like the director was out of ideas and just looking to kill time.

CLOSING THOUGHT: For all its talk about brainpower and knowledge, this film is distressingly dumb. If I made a full list of all the ridiculous scenes and concepts in Lucy – even leaving out the “humans only use 10% of their brains” pseudo-science at its core – this review would run too long. Arguably, this film would have been better off as a pure action piece, doing away with any high-minded concepts and just focusing on Lucy getting revenge against her abductors using her new psychic powers. That would have been a lot more entertaining, at least – and it probably would have been a better use of Johansson, who could have brought some of that Black Widow attitude into her performance. If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that nobody will remember Lucy for long – everyone I know is making plans to see Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend.