2. Smart Drug Makes You Conveniently Dumb To Move Plot Forward - Limitless
Rule: The drug will make you smarter in every way imaginable. Limitless is about a man, Eddie (Bradley Cooper) who takes special pills that unlock the full potential of his brain, essentially turning him into a highly successful and productive genius overnight. This sounds all well and good, but this is conveniently forgotten when the film has to strive for additional conflict other than Robert De Niro and a series of increasingly tedious business deals. In order to make money faster through his investments, Eddie borrows $100,000 from a Russian mobster, which is exactly what the smartest guy on the planet would do, right? Wrong. Surely he could have come up with a way to make that money quickly? Either way, the smartest guy on the planet would probably appreciate the risk-reward scenario and elect to find it somewhere else, even if it took a little longer.