CineVue by Adam Lowes

Lucy feels like the work of a filmmaker who has recovered his mojo.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

It's gleefully bold, visually adventurous, often funny, strikingly concise — the whole heart-pounding tale is over in 90 minutes — and 100% entertaining.

Time by Richard Corliss

The summer’s best, coolest, juiciest, smartest action movie.

The Playlist by Gabe Toro

It's basically the perfect summer movie, because it's designed to be.

The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

It comes across, instead, as a directorial flight of fancy, an imaginatively goofy take on an already goofy idea, exaggerated by Besson’s blunt style and an uncommonly fast pace.

Arizona Republic by Bill Goodykoontz

Lucy is insane, makes very little sense, doesn't stand up to scrutiny and is an absolute blast.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

It’s the blockbuster of the summer.

CineVue by Ben Nicholson

This undeniably silly, but raucously entertaining, off-the-wall transhumanist actioner is an absolute riot.

Total Film by Kate Stables

Besson is at his balls-out bonkers best in this genre-scrambling, mind-expanding exhilarator.

Austin Chronicle by Louis Black

The best comic-book movie in a long time, though based on no comic, Lucy is a film that mates classic Besson with Quentin Tarantino in a go at the mystical, world-solving vision found in Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Terrence Malick’s "The Tree of Life."

Slant Magazine by Abhimanyu Das

Vulgar auteurist Luc Besson finally commits wholeheartedly to his decades-long preoccupation with waifish young women discovering their inner Shiva, spinning the concept out to its most delirious possible extremes.

Variety by Justin Chang

Giddily recycling everything from “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “The Matrix” to yakuza actioners and National Geographic documentaries, it’s a garish, trippy, wildly uneven and finally quite disarming piece of work, graced by a moment-to-moment unpredictability.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

Lucy doesn't hold together, but with its flashy innovation, Besson's trying to freshen the formula. It's the kind of freewheeling mess of a movie you wish studios would try out more often.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore

Besson’s script may let her (and Freeman) down in the third act, but the 89 minute long Lucy is so brisk it’ll give you whiplash. Even marginal thrillers benefit from a director and star who have a sense of urgency and are as hellbent as this on not overstaying their welcome.

The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman

The end of the movie goes completely off the rails, but in a way that is charming in its stupidity.

Hitfix by Drew McWeeny

There are moments of real wonder and even beauty amidst the slam and the bang and the big bada boom, and while Lucy is a mixed bag, it's been mixed by a master, and it is delightfully, happily insane.

Film.com by Kate Erbland

Even Besson’s most bold choices – and this is a film that goes weird, and then just keeps getting weirder – don’t seem so revolutionary when packaged in such well-tread trappings and increasingly shoddy writing.

TheWrap by Alonso Duralde

Lucy is a confounding experience, but at a brisk 85 or so minutes, it manages not to outstay its welcome. Those not enamored of Besson's particular brand of Euro-schlock grindhouse existentialism, however, may find their brains more stimulated elsewhere.

The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore

Lucy plays more like a big dumb superhero flick than sci-fi.