MOVIE REVIEWS: LUCY

With Lucy, it’s the images, not the story, that matters, most critics seem to agree. Forget the character’s big brain, they suggest — you probably will anyhow — and just enjoy the effects and illusions. "You can scoff at Besson’s philosophies and hypotheses, but to do that would miss what’s in front of you. Lucy is an impeccably realized vision of Besson’s view of things," writes Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s also star Scarlett Johansson’s, of course. As Ty Burr remarks in the Boston Globe, "It’s all ridiculous and enjoyable, and at the movie’s center is an actress creatively guessing at what omniscience might feel like." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal also finds fault with the script, which, he says, "doesn’t always keep track of its own logic, at least not for this 10-percenter, but it’s gleefully bold, visually adventurous, often funny, strikingly concise." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times underscores that assessment. "None of it makes any sense," she writes, "but then Mr. Besson has never been one for narrative logic, being a bigger believer in the distractions of fast cuts, ping-ponging camera moves and spectacular bloodshed that sweep you up and away." Nevertheless, Kenneth Turan concludes in the Los Angeles Times, Besson’s "heart is not in action-set pieces but rather in peculiar speculation about the nature of reality and the meaning of life." But it may be all well and good that Besson offers such speculation, but Bruce Demara in the Toronto Star argues that he doesn’t go far enough. "No one onscreen has the answers to the lofty questions Besson poses," he writes, "and, despite all the dizzying and splendid imagery of the film’s closing frames, it’s patently clear that neither does he."