Love it or hate it — and you’ll have plenty of company either way — Luc Besson’s “Lucy,” which is predicted to capture the box office this weekend, is a singularly eccentric vision. Part of the fun of reading reviews of the movie is watching critics (including this one) try and describe what BuzzFeed’s Alison Willmore aptly calls “a future stoner classic.”
Wesley Morris, Grantland: “It’s as if Besson sat through a half-hour of Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life,’ hit fast-forward, and thought, I can do that but with drugs and guns and car chases.”
Chris Klimek, NPR: “‘Lucy’ does for recreational drugs what ‘The Fantastic Four’ did for Gamma Rays. If the overdose is massive enough and the dope powerful enough, it unlocks doors previously accessible only to those who’ve read ‘The Secret.’ Or ‘Flowers for Algernon.'”
David Edelstein, New York: “As our descendants evolve, colonize more of their own brains, and approach the man-machine singularity, filmmakers can continue to add onto ‘Lucy,’ and then some critic can add on to the end of this review because we’ll never evolve beyond movie criticism.”
Fortunately, director and co-writer Luc Besson has already come up with the perfect way to describe his movie, which he did at the script stage (via The Film Stage):
Fortunatley, “‘Léon: The Professional‘ meets ‘Inception‘ meets ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,'” is not so easy to visualize, so you’ll just have to see “Lucy” yourself and make sure it finishes first. Movies this big and this weird don’t come along often.
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