Limitless: Idiots to the max!

There are some movies that you learn to love over time. The more you think about it, the better it gets. You examine all the layers and realize how complex the story is and an appreciation grows. This movie is the exact opposite of that.

On its face, this is a thoroughly entertaining movie. As it progresses, however, it gets increasingly stupid. And the more I think about it, the more problems I have with this movie.

It starts off with Bradley Cooper looking like a homeless drug addict.

Will work for hairbrush

His girlfriend is sick and tired of telling her friends that he's not actually homeless, so she dumps him and moves on to greener and cleaner pastures.

B. Coop runs into his ex-brother-in-law/drug dealer and gets to try a new drug that helps users access all of their brain power at once. I guess free samples aren't just for Costco anymore. Anyway, Coop is super depressed because his life sucks and since he has nothing to lose he takes the mystery drug called NZT. AND IT'S AMAZING. The drug gives him OCD symptoms and he cleans his apartment and then writes part of a novel.

Whoa, I can read the Matrix.

The NZT finally got Coop off his lazy ass and he realizes that he wants to be productive all the time. Instead of getting his shit together, he goes begging for more drugs. To nobody's surprise, his dealer gets killed before Coop can get his drugs. But it takes him about 30 seconds to find the stash, so life is good. The cops don't even see the bulging bag of pills shoved down his pants, and he's free to go.

With this enormous stash of miracle drugs, Coop can do anything; he charms the pants off everyone he meets, learns new languages and makes millions in the stock market. He even gets his girlfriend back because he finally took a shower.

Life is peachy, but only with the drugs. Without the drugs he's just a big dummy again. Eventually he he starts taking two pills a day and then he has black out episodes. For example, he couldn't remember how he got from one part of town to another, or whether or not he killed a hooker in a hotel room. That's annoying!

Instead of trying to figure out if he actually murdered someone, he tries to find out if the pills are going to kill him. And survey says: yes, definitely going to die. And the kicker is that he'll die from withdrawal, so he can't stop taking the NZT. What a dilemma!

Since he might die, B. Coop confesses to his girlfriend and makes her pick up his stash. Another NZT addict follows her and tries to kill her for the drugs. She speed dials Coop and he tells her take NZT to help her figure out what to do. It works like a charm. She looks around to find something to defend herself with, and she definitely makes the right choice:

She swings the little girl around and slices her attacker in the face with the ice skates. The little girl is probably scarred for life. Good job!

More people try to kill Coop for the drugs, but fueled with NZT he can outsmart them all. And actually, even without the drugs he kills one of them who was on NZT, which makes absolutely no sense based on the premise of this movie. The drugs make it so you can figure out everything faster than everyone else, but a drug addict experiencing withdrawal symptoms is somehow able to outsmart a guy feeling the full effects of the drugs? I don't think so.

Anyway, Coop somehow manages to kill his NZT-fueled attacker, and to get high again he has another brilliant plan: HE DRINKS THE BLOOD FROM THE GUY HE JUST KILLED. Ewwww. He laps it up like a dog. And even though Coop was using two pills a day, somehow a few sips of blood pump him up like a full dose... huh? Movie science blows my mind.

A year later, Coop has forgotten his blood-drinking, hooker-killing days and is running for senator of New York, and then maybe for president.

Actually, he's pretty tame for a politician

Running for president can take a long time, and there was only a limited stash of NZT to keep him smart/alive. But no sweat, Coop's drug-infused brain solved the problem: he hired a chemist to make more drugs. Or maybe he weaned himself off, while somehow maintaining his super-enhanced brain power (I'm pretty sure that was a lie). It was an ambiguous ending and I don't really know which one actually happened. Whatever, I don't even care. I just want to know when his gay sex scandal will surface.