LUCY

Lucy
Grade: B

Starring: Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman
Premise: A woman tricked into a deadly smuggling scheme is infected by a powerful chemical drug that enables her to use nearly all of her brain’s capacity.

Rated R for strong violence, blood and gory images, language and disturbing content

Lucy is decent enough for what it is, but what it is, is a misguided mismash of balls-to-the-wall action flick and preachy psychological enlightenment. It’s not a good combination anyway, but Lucy is short enough to be an insanely-entertaining action flick, but not nearly long enough to get us thinking any huge, serious, deep truths about humanity’s existence or life’s purpose. This isn’t exactly Inception, though it rather wants to be. What it is, is a frustrating amount of hooey getting in the way of what is, at times, a truly gripping, can’t-look-away suspense thriller. It’s the last third of the movie that decides to get really preachy, crashing down to an ending that prompted giggles in my theater, an embarrassingly-lame attempt to challenge the audience to walk out feeling changed after watching Scarlett Johansson mutate into a gooey computer.

Which is all a shame, because the movie opens with 10 or 15 of the most gripping, terrifyingly suspenseful minutes I’ve seen in ages—Quentin Tarantino could scarcely have done better. It’s proof that with a little more vision (or a little less), Lucy could have been something really special.

Plot

Right away, hard-partying nobody Lucy (Johansson) knows something isn’t right. Her fling, Richard (Pilou Asbaek) has been offered $1,000 to bring a metal brief case into an office building to a Korean gangster, but he seems reluctant to do it. It’s fairly playful back-and-forth, until he handcuffs the case to Lucy’s wrist and tells her the only way to get it off is deliver it to the gangster inside—a Mr. Jang—who should have the key. Within minutes, Lucy has seen Richard get killed, has been grabbed and dragged upstairs by hulking Korean gangsters, seen Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi) emerge from a side-room containing a stack of bloody bodies, and seen a man get his head blown off right in front of her. Then Mr. Jang asks her if she wants a job.

Just hours later, Lucy realizes she’s on the front lines of the gangsters’ quest to distribute a powerful new drug to the world. It’s been implanted inside her while she was unconscious. It’s when the drug starts to seep into her system, infecting each cell, that things start getting out of control. Suddenly she feels enlightened, opened, able to detect minute details, hear things no human should hear, capable of astonishing feats she’s certainly never been capable of. She begins to understand even before she gets in contact with a brilliant neurologist (Morgan Freeman)—the drug is allowing her access to more of her brain’s capacity than the 10% humans normally use. More and more. Soon she’s capable of mind-reading, incredible memory, telekinesis, and even superhuman strength. The gangsters have gotten wind of it and are rushing to try and stop her, while the professor desperately seeks a one-on-one with her, trying to get her use her now extraordinary brain power to teach him the secrets of the universe.

What Works?

Like I said, the first fifteen minutes are extraordinary. I’ve seen the previews for Lucy at least a dozen times, so I knew where it was all going—a bag of drugs in her stomach gives her unseemly brainpower—but even so, those opening scenes are so thoroughly disconcerting and creepy (a mix of crime flick and horror movie) that they’re completely riveting. In fact, even more than that—cut out a few inter-cut scenes of Morgan Freeman lecturing an anonymous audience on the human brain, and you’d have probably thirty consecutive minutes of can’t-look-away stuff. It’d be even better if the trailers hadn’t revealed so much and made it obvious what was going on—the beginning is still riveting, but imagine if you hadn’t the faintest idea where it was going.

The second third of the movie isn’t bad, either. As Lucy accesses more and more brain power and is able to do more and more, the film becomes wildly entertaining—watch her flip cars with her mind, surf the web at hyper-speed with a different computer in each hand, change her own hair color at will to hide from the pursuing gangsters, and change Freeman’s professor from a skeptic to a believer in seconds with incredible hacking skills. The part where she throws an attacking gunman through a wall with a casual flick of the hand in his direction isn’t bad, either. Compounded by some fantastic visuals, Lucy builds up one crazy head of steam.

What Doesn’t Work?

Even before it starts to get really preachy, Lucy has a few alarm bells early, with random clips of footage intercut with the movie’s main action that are completely unnecessary (like—we know Lucy is walking into a trap in the office building with the case cuffed to her wrist without seeing random clips of cheetahs stalking grazing gazelles; it’s not rocket science). This doesn’t heighten the suspense but is merely distracting, especially when those early scenes are fine on their own.

And then the movie peters out. After an early scene where Lucy easily evades groups of pursuing policemen and gangsters and then uses her brainpower to navigate an impossible high-speed route against traffic, the movie seems to promise a really epic action throw-down only to have large groups of Korean gangsters and French policemen fight each other in a hallway while Lucy is sheltered in an office connected to a computer. Seriously? Wouldn’t it have been way more fun to get Lucy out there to dodge bullets Matrix-style, and throw all the guys through walls? This could have been a kind of stupid-fun R-rated superhero flick! Instead we watch her pretend she’s in the age of the dinosaurs? Really?

And don’t even get me started on that closing line.

Content

There are a few shots of a barely-clad Johansson, and a brief clip montage of different kinds of animals engaging in the act of reproduction (Humans included), but Lucy derives its hardness from the violence and related details. There are a few scenes of impromptu surgeries (two of which Lucy does with nothing more than her hand) that will give squeamish viewers the willies, and we do see a lot of people get shot. It’s not exactly Scorcese, but it’s rated R for a reason.

Bottom Line:

Lucy has a killer premise, a brilliant first fifteen minutes and some terrific ideas up its sleeve—it’s a shame it almost all goes to waste. The last ten minutes are so hokey and convoluted they don’t deserve to be connected to that opening. Johansson and Freeman are good, obviously, but, by the end of the movie, you end up feeling had. But at least it gives a reasonable explanation as to why Johansson supplied the disembodied voice of a computer in January’s Oscar-nominated drama Her.

Lucy (2014)

Written and Directed by Luc Besson
Rated R
Length: 89 minutes

GET ON UP

Get On Up

Grade: C+

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Dan Akroyd, Viola Davis, Craig Robinson, Lennie James and Octavia Spencer, with Jamarian Scott and Jordan Scott as young James Brown

Premise: Born into extreme poverty, Augusta, Georgia native James Brown makes the leap from a life of petty crime to worldwide fame as the Godfather of Soul.

Rated PG-13 for language (including racial slurs), sexual content, brief drug use, violent/disturbing images and some emotional content

There’s only one type of person who needs to see Get On Up: die-hard fans of the late James Brown. If you were a huge fan of Brown, who died on Christmas Day 2006, and phrases like Godfather of Soul and Get Up Offa That Thing automatically make you want to smile and dance and sing, you need to hurry to theaters to see this new biopic of your hero.

If the previous sentence does not describe you, you don’t need to see this movie. In fact, I’d recommend you stay away from it. Despite an impressive pedigree (directed by The Help’s Tate Taylor, and featuring an award-worthy performance by Chadwick Boseman), Get On Up is a long, slow, slightly-miserable time at the movies. There’s some great music and moments of high energy, but a vague, muddled narrative, a lack of important characters and a warts-and-all approach that makes its subject seem like an egotistical prick quickly squander excitement and interest. Even compared to similar lengthy epics about famous musical names (2004’s Ray, 2005’s Walk the Line), Get On Up is a disappointment.

Plot

The film basically recounts some of the highs and lows in the life of the late Godfather of Soul. We get glimpses of his dirt-poor childhood, growing up in a shack in the Georgia woods with an uncaring mother (Viola Davis) who one day decides to run off, leaving James alone with a stern, abusive father (Lennie James). After a while, Brown’s father decided to join the army, leaving young James with Aunt Honey (Octavia Spencer), who runs a whorehouse in town. Still largely without any parental influence, James (played as a teen and adult by Chadwick Boseman) winds up in jail for petty theft before he’s even eighteen, but he’s largely saved by a chance meeting with Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis), a budding musician who sees real talent in James’ gospel church-inspired energy, and convinces his grandfather to pay his bail. Byrd and Brown team up in a group that begins rocking night clubs, but they hit the big time after a trip from Little Richard (Brandon Smith) leads to a chance meeting with an agent from King Records.

With some assistance from manager Ben Bart (Dan Akroyd), Byrd and Brown’s group, “The Famous Flames”, takes off, but there’s no denying the real draw is the man at the front. With almost inhumane vocal range and smoothly eye-popping dance moves, James can soon command any audience, any venue, anything he wants. Life’s not perfect, though. With great fame comes adultery, alcohol and drug abuse, estrangement from his children, paranoia that his friends and musical collaborators are aspiring against him, and a gargantuan ego. When his personal and professional lives take a tumble in the late ‘80s, James looks, seems, and almost feels washed up, but an early ‘90s attempt to make amends with Byrd (whom he fell out with years earlier) gives him hope of a real comeback.

What Works?

If you’re not a James Brown enthusiast but you’re demanding a reason to see this movie, I can only give you one, but it’s a big one: the leading performance by Chadwick Boseman. Essentially an unknown when he scored the coveted role of baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson in last year’s surprise hit 42, Boseman also had a small appearance in this spring’s Kevin Costner drama Draft Day, but still isn’t anybody’s idea of a household name. He may still not be after his portrayal of Brown here, but that’s only because that portrayal is so utterly convincing. Research about the movie and Boseman’s preparation reveals the actor did not sing (unlike Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line), but, hearing the songs, it’s not hard to fathom that studio execs figured they couldn’t possibly teach an actor to sing and screech like that. So he lip-synched. However, I read that Boseman spent two months learning Brown’s dance moves, working with trainers and choreographers five to eight hours a day to master the groove (which he attempts to define for a flock of very white news reporters at one point in the movie); he’s also reported to have done more than 90 of Brown’s famous splits. With this absolutely convincing physicality, Boseman makes easily apparent the Godfather of Soul’s fiery passion, explosive energy, and undeniable sex appeal. He also speaks in an often unintelligible Southern accent that, I am told, is a dead ringer for the late Brown’s. But for all the flash and glamour of the performance with this physicality and vocal quirks, Boseman also makes clear Brown’s bitterness, his ego, his self-obsession, and—though he’d be loathe to ever admit it—his loneliness. A childhood without parents and without anything taught him to rely on only himself.

As Brown’s long-time collaborator Bobby Byrd, Nelsan Ellis has the only other significant, recurring role in the movie; he’s wonderful. It’s not a showy part, but Ellis is affecting in those key moments where he has to defend Brown the mad genius from nay-saying band members, reports, and execs.

Basically, if anyone is thinking or talking about Get On Up more than a few weeks from now, it’ll be due to Boseman’s tremendous portrayal. Were this movie released in October or November instead of August, he’d likely be a near shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Since this movie was released at the beginning of August, I won’t guarantee anything, but even without any year-end award honors, this work would be a huge highlight on anybody’s resume.

What Doesn’t Work?

It was someone’s idea to tell Brown’s story in very non-linear fashion—almost on the level of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s slapdash dramas 21 Grams and Babel. This was a terrible idea. While Ray and Walk the Line similarly used framing devices to avoid a history-book-style chronological trek through their subjects’ lives, Get On Up starts with a scene that cuts to an earlier scene that cuts to an earlier scene that cuts to an earlier scene, and then finally, we have a two-minute scene of young James Brown at his ramshackle home in the woods, before it bumps back out to another random concert. It’s almost half an hour before any sort of chronological sense is established. For one, this fairly random approach makes it hard for an audience to develop roots of interest and emotional connection. For another, it makes an already-long movie (138 minutes) feel even longer and more tedious because it’s so unorganized. And this random approach also pretty much eliminates our connection to any of the other important people in Brown’s life. Other than Byrd, no one else is established in detail. Dan Akroyd has a few scenes as a studio exec for whom Brown is a meal ticket, Craig Robinson plays a disapproving band member, Viola Davis flits in and out of a few scenes as Brown’s no-good mom, and Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer has maybe two short scenes. Only one of Brown’s rumored multiple spouses/mistresses has any significant screen time, but my disinterest was so considerable by the time she had three scenes in a row, I didn’t even care to catch her name.

I know nobody’s perfect, and warts-and-all movies about famous people, especially, are often praised for their grit and realism and for pulling back the curtain so we can see the ugly stuff, but Get On Up should prove a real test of any James Brown fan’s mettle. I’m not knocking Boseman’s performance, but with his selfish preening and raging ego, Brown comes across as the most unlikeable real person portrayed at the forefront of a movie since Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Were Brown alive today, this movie would certainly not make me a fan of his. It’s curious that a movie produced by one of his good friends (The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger) would make him seem like a person with so few redeeming qualities.

Content

There’s some cussing (including at least one word that starts with F), a bit of child and spousal abuse, a scene where a young Brown pulls the shoes off the victim of a lynching, a few scenes that hint heavily at what The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper would call “coitus”, and one scene where Brown smokes a joint laced with something else. I’m sure it’s nothing to what it could’ve been.

The Bottom Line

Despite a tremendous, award-worthy performance from leading man Chadwick Boseman, who lip-synched but did all his own dancing and even the splits, Get On Up is a drag, a long, disorganized, movie that makes its main character seem like a colossal prick. Unless you’re a huge James Brown fan, I’d avoid this one.

Get On Up (2014)

Directed by Tate Taylor

Written by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth

Rated PG-13

Length: 138 minutes

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

Guardians of the Galaxy

Grade: B+

Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Benicio Del Toro and Glenn Close, with Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket and Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot

Premise: A diverse group of outcasts, loners, and thieves become allies when a powerful device hunted by an evil warlord falls into their hands.

Rated PG-13 for violence and intense action, scenes of peril and destruction, language and crude humor, and some emotional content

The Marvel Comics movie craze has by this point touched on nearly all the best-known Marvel comics heroes (Spiderman, the X-Men, the Avengers, etc…), but with cash continuing to flow in for superhero movies, Stan Lee and his friends have reached a little deeper into the vault for a new project. Lacking the angst of Spiderman or the smugness of Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy is based on a comic of the same name by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, who, judging from the adaptation of their work, clearly used their comic to live out their epic space geek fantasies and to have more than a little fun. Thus, the movie is part hilarious, rollicking entertainment and part confusingly generic sci-fi hooey. To audiences who aren’t expecting more than that, it’s sure to be a hit. To me—well, I did laugh an awful lot.

Plot

Once a confused, lonely orphan on earth, alien abductee Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) has grown up to become a thrill-seeking, star-hopping, womanizing wise-cracker (codename: Star Lord) who likes to make a big statement, but really just wants to line his pockets. Early in the movie, he lands on a deserted planet and grabs a mysterious orb. Figuring it’s obviously pretty important/powerful since he had to escape a band of lethal-looking space junkies to get it, he figures he’ll head to the nearest civilized planet and sell it to the highest bidder. Turns out the orb is an object coveted by Ronan (Lee Pace), a blue-skinned, nearly invincible space baddie feared across the galaxies for his lack of mercy. When Peter brings the orb to Nova—an Earth-like planet populated mostly by humans—Ronan dispatches his right-hand woman, trained assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana), to retrieve the orb. She first attempts a seduction, but she’s thwarted in her attempts to grab the orb by a pair of bounty hunters, Rocket, a walking, talking Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and his friend/attendee Groot, a nearly mute but incredibly strong humanoid made entirely of ever-growing leaves and vines (and voiced, when he does speak, by Vin Diesel). When the four make a big public scene trying to grab the orb from each other, they’re tossed into a high-tech space prison.

In prison, it doesn’t take long for the inmates to recognize a minion of the infamous Ronan, but Gamora is saved from a bloodthirsty gang by the unlikely person of Drax (Dave Bautista), a hulking, tattooed humanoid who lost his wife and daughter to Ronan and who is persuaded by Peter that Gamora is his ticket to revenge. Since Peter has a buyer for the orb lined up, they all agree to break out of prison together, hand the orb over, and split the money, at which point Gamora can return to Ronan and Drax, stowing away on her ship, can kill Ronan and get his revenge. But the buyer turns out to be the unsavory person known as The Collector (Benicio Del Toro), who reveals that the orb has incredible destructive power. This persuades Peter to change his mind about selling it off, but the orb is snatched by Ronan’s minions in a surprise attack. Now Ronan, who’s under the thumb of an even more fearsome warlord named Thanos, sets a course to use the orb to destroy all the planets that oppose him, starting with Nova. Whether seeking to do good or to get revenge or just try to somehow wrangle money out of possession of the orb, Peter, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot decide to stop Ronan, and either hide the orb or find a way to destroy it.

What Doesn’t Work?

As ever, I’m being deliberate in my plot synopsis not to give anything too crucial away, but I could hardly give a better description even if I wanted to. Guardians of the Galaxy may be the least-relatable Marvel movie made yet. Only a brief prologue is actually set on earth, and all the galaxy-hopping and humanoid supporting characters mean the audience is showered with a barrage of names of people, places and things that often are either difficult to remember or hard to tell apart. Some people will undoubtedly try to refute this, but the movie gets a little confusing. At the same time, the central dynamic of the story is one that, though talked up, has been done more than once before (there’s a reason I called this movie “confusingly-generic”). It felt, to me, almost identical to the central premise of last November’s Thor: The Dark World—a baddie set on world/universe domination tries to get hold of a powerful MacGuffin that will either kill him or make him all-powerful, and the good guys try to stop him even though they (supposedly) can’t control the power of said MacGuffin, so their efforts are in vain unless some solution happens to exist that can stop the baddie in his would-be dominating tracks.

What Works?

I’m not trying to be a Grinch. I didn’t fully understand the plot, but what I could make of it seemed awfully familiar. Feel free to call me/message me and let me know how it actually is if you’re reading this and believing I’ve misunderstood it.

I’m not trying to knock Guardians too much, though, because I really enjoyed it overall. It’s hilarious, for one—I laughed out loud many times.  The CGI is spectacular, matter-of-factly creating war ships, cities, alien creatures, epic battles, and even entire galaxies that are stunning to behold. And despite that obviously-huge spectacle, we don’t lose sight of the characters, one of the most likably-entertaining groups yet in a superhero movie. Chris Pratt has the makings of a huge star, what with his leading-man looks and comedy sidekick’s sense of humor. He’s terrific as the devil-may-care hero, and his self-professed codename is funny just because it sounds like the online usernames of geeky fanboys who will adore this movie. Pratt's primary ally/foil is Zoe Saldana, who’s quickly becoming the go-to gal for anything big that doesn’t require a generic blonde, and for good reason. She’s gorgeous whether she’s allowed her normal looks (i.e. as Uhura in Star Trek), given a green and scarred visage (as she is here), or made over as a blue cat/alien humanoid (as Neytiri in James Camero’s Avatar), and even though she’s typically tough, she always shows just enough vulnerability for us to fall for her. Her presence is always welcome. As Drax, Dave Bautista is mad, blue, and covered in tattoos, but he provides some of the movie’s biggest laughs with his character’s utter lack of humor or irony (when told a joke has “gone over his head”, Drax curtly replies “nothing goes over my head. Nothing can go over my head. My reflexes are excellent. I would catch it.”). Vin Diesel’s voice is barely heard coming out of Groot, and he famously only says a couple words, but the woody creature presents plenty of laughs by virtue of his animalistic curiosity and naïveté. You’ll be surprised how much you come to adore Groot. And a gun-toting, curse-spouting, fully-CGI raccoon turns out to be the perfect role for Bradley Cooper; often aggressively over-the-top in his onscreen acting (American Hustle, Wedding Crashers, The Hangover), his sharp, caustic arrogance perfectly suits this pint-sized mercenary. This group is worth watching; tough, hilarious and heart-warming, they make you want a sequel.

*Speaking of sequel, there is a short scene at the very end of the credits, but I doubt it’s a real harbinger of things to come, unless someone really is thinking of bringing back Howard the Duck.

Content

There’s a tough scene right away, where a young Peter gets some last anecdotes at his mother’s deathbed, and a good bit of the movie’s action is a bit heavier than the more cartoonish stuff in most comic book movies. There are also plenty of cusswords, many of them spoken by the raccoon. Guardians is wild and full of wall-to-wall action, often with very high stakes, but there’s nothing here anyone used to PG-13 movies will be shocked by.

Bottom Line:

Guardians of the Galaxy feels like a scrappy little brother to the likes of Spider-Man, X-Men and Captain America—it might not have quite the prestige, nobility, or emotional depth, but it’s twice as hip and three times as funny. With a central cast you’ll welcome back to the big screen, constant pell-mell action and dazzling, flawless special effects, Guardians is as much fun as superhero origin stories get, and it’ll keep you entertained for sure.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Directed by James Gunn

Screenplay by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman

Based on the comics by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning

Rated PG-13

Length: 121 minutes