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Limitless Brilliance? No, but It's Fun

Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert De Niro star in Neil Burger film

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 18, 2011 1:44 PM CDT

(Newser) – Limitless, in which Bradley Cooper plays a struggling writer who takes a pill to vastly expand his brain power, may not exactly be award-worthy—but critics agree it's a fun ride:

In the New York Times, AO Scott calls the movie “an energetic, enjoyably preposterous compound—it’s a paranoid thriller blended with pseudo-neuro-science fiction and catalyzed by a jolting dose of satire.” But, he notes, sometimes “the filmmakers seem to have misplaced their supply of coherence pills.”

Peter Travers observes that “the plot hits some nasty speed bumps, and the ending is rote. But getting there is terrific,” he writes in Rolling Stone. “Watching Eddie flex his brain cells delivers a kick on par with Spider-Man testing his skills with small skips and jumps until he is leaping across rooftops.”
Notes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Limitless only uses 15%, maybe 20% of its brain. Still, that’s more than a lot of movies do.”

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In this film publicity image released by Relativity Media, Robert De Niro, left, and Bradley Cooper are shown in a scene from "Limitless." (AP Photo/Relativity Media, John Baer)

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Limitless Brilliance? No, but It's Fun

Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert De Niro star in Neil Burger film

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