(Credit: Netflix)

Thanks to her decade-long association with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Scarlett Johansson became one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood and one of its most prominent female action stars, even if her ass-kicking work outside of playing Natasha Romanoff has been inconsistent at best.

The most egregious offender by far is the live-action Ghost in the Shell, which would have been a terrible movie with or without the whitewashing backlash that greeted Johansson’s casting as protagonist Motoko Kusanagi. She co-headlined the first flop of Michael Bay’s career with The Island, too, while the jury remains out on whether or not she’s capable of dragging Jurassic World out of mediocrity.

The most successful non-Marvel actioner of Johansson’s career also happens to be the dumbest by far, but it’s not entirely a bad thing. At no point should the film be treated with anything approaching seriousness, but with the brain switched firmly to the ‘off’ position, there’s some fun to be had with Luc Besson’s unashamedly bonkers Lucy.

The myth that humans only use 10% of the brain has been widely discredited and debunked by the scientific community, but if Besson doesn’t care, why should his audience? The filmmaker opts to use the remaining 90% as the foundation for a story that grows sillier by the minute until it reaches a final scene about as stupid as blockbuster cinema has ever gotten.

Johansson’s title character is duped into transporting a briefcase full of drugs to a business associate, only to end up abducted and presented with the threat of being turned into a mule. However, when the chemical she’s been implanted with bursts and seeps into her bloodstream, she engages all of her brain’s functionality and uses it to lay waste to anyone unfortunate enough to get in her way.

There’s a mind-numbing amount of scientific mumbo-jumbo in the script, but Besson was at least smart enough to hire one of the greatest exposition-droppers in the game to deliver it. It’s clear Morgan Freeman has no idea what the hell he’s talking about most of the time, but it’s all in the syrupy smooth delivery.

Empty-headed escapism and Netflix are always a recipe for success, and when an A-list pairing like Johansson and Freeman is thrown into the melting pot, Lucy was inevitably going to soar on streaming. A decade after sailing past $450 million at the global box office, it’s back with a vengeance as the eighth most-watched feature on the platform.