Review: Sucker Punch

Grade: D

Upsides: A unique vision that could only have come from 300 and Watchmen’s Zack Snyder. A few thrilling action scenes make the abundance of weaknesses somewhat digestible.

Downsides: Needlessly convoluted plot supported by 2D fetish fodder characters that are anchored by generally weak performances. A pure example of the worst qualities of style over substance.

There’s an easy joke that describes the experience of watching Sucker Punch.

I wish I was better than this, but…yeah…I got sucker punched.

Zack Snyder’s first directorial effort of original material is what some might term a “hot mess”. Vapid, incoherent and inherently fetishtic--and those aren’t even its worst qualities. Sucker Punch will mess with your head and you will feel like crap after it.

This clusterf-bomb, ironically, delivers its best punch first, but never follows up or surprises. A stirring dialogue-less sequence opens the film, introducing a nameless waif--in a timeless, unknown setting that may or may not be the 50's with Sin City trappings--who is committed to the, Arkham Asylum adjacent, Lennox House sanatorium after a violent encounter with her shady stepfather (Gerard Plunkett). Baby Doll (Emily Browning), as she is anointed, must find a way to free herself--and her coterie of cutely-named compatriots, including the aggressive Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and the raven-haired Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) (Clearly, someone looked up irony in the dictionary)--before a mysterious doctor arrives to “remedy” her disposition.

Now, that simple premise might be the foundation for a compelling story. But, therein lies the rub. Not content to tell a reasonably coherent or remotely human story, Snyder opts for a fable filled with fetish fodder and unfettered foolishness. Instead of having Baby Doll and her crew simply try to escape in the real world, Snyder and screenwriting partner Steve Shibuya have created a multi-layered dream world--the strangest this side of Christopher Nolan’s Inception--where Sailor Moon and the…I mean Baby Doll and her crew must recover the five mystical items they’ll need to bust out. Now, this dream world is a layer beneath the dream world where the girls are dancers in a seedy brothel/club that looks like an asylum (think the Pussycat Dolls LIVE at Arkham). Confused? Don’t worry. If you survived Inception, this is a cakewalk, only the cake is pretty nasty and the walk will kill your feet. That said, I feel bad for Snyder and the timing of this release. He may have conceived of Sucker Punch before Inception ever hit theaters, but since it shares Inception’s multilayered dream worlds and multi-plot structure, it will always be compared—unfavorably—to Nolan’s modern mindbending heist flick.

Sucker Punch’s visually distinct dream worlds are triggered by Baby Doll’s imagination, which is anchored by real world elements. Characters and items in real world appear as symbolically exaggerated versions of themselves in dream world. (Yes. Shades of Alice and Dorothy’s fantastic adventures abound.) Once inside the first dream, the girls are transported to the next dreamscape—one where robots, dragons, orcs and Nazi zombies try to stop them from obtaining mystical items in some occasionally thrilling action sequences—by Baby Doll’s supposedly hypnotic dance. How hypnotic is this dance? Good question. I don’t know because Snyder never shows it.

Even if Snyder did deliver a scene of this transcendent dance, Browning’s Baby Doll doesn’t have the charisma or coordination, based on her sluggish warm up maneuver--to command an audience’s undivided attention. Browning is a blank. As with most protagonists in today’s CG-heavy genre flicks, she lacks any discernible personality or allure beyond being a bleached blonde and harboring a curious affinity for Japanese schoolgirl uniforms (This is right up your alley Otakus, or so Snyder thinks). Abbie Cornish’s Sweet Pea and Jena Malone’s Rocket fare slightly better as sisters at odds over supporting Baby Doll’s “insane” escape plan. Of the two, Cornish fares better, showing a hair more subtlety and depth than any of the other cartoons on screen. Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung are sadly—or not depending on your respect for their “talents”—relegated to thankless roles as badass action girl #4 and badass action girl #5, with heart! Before both signed on, someone should’ve told them that unless you’re blonde you won’t be clocking any significant screen time.

Antagonizing our intrepid heroines is the thoroughly underwhelming Blue Jones played by Oscar Isaac—who was equally smarmy and ineffective as Prince John in last year’s Robin Hood. I say this with no hesitation and total awareness of its hyperbole, but never has there been a less intimidating antagonist on film than Oscar Isaac's Blue. He is physically smaller than the heroines—and most of the cast for that matter—and he poses only the scantest of threats because it’s never made explicitly clear what he does to the girls until the end. Now, smart moviegoers can figure out Blue’s evil intentions and actions as soon as they see him, but the rule of “show don’t tell” exists for a reason. Carla Gugino plays counterpoint to Isaac’s Blue as psychiatrist/house mistress with a silly Polish accent Madam Gorski. Scott Glen shows up at the beginning of each stage—just like a video game tutorial—to gruffly give the girls their mission and drop a litany of goofy clichés like “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything” as the film’s banal attempt at humor. Keep an eye out for Jon Hamm in a pivotal, but underserved role (Someone stop giving this man extended cameos, and offer him the lead. Please.).

Sucker Punch’s few redeeming qualities are hardly enough to save this muddled misfire, but they are worth noting. Above all else, Sucker Punch has vision. I don’t have the inside track, but I’m 90% sure Snyder told the story he wanted to tell. His visual signature is all over this flick. From an abundance of slow-mo shots to the charred earth settings and rusty sunset palette, Sucker Punch is clearly the love child of 300 and Watchmen. It also owes a debt to one of my favorite directors, Japan’s Kazuya Kiriya—a man also know for his style over substance approach. Take a look at Kiriya’s only feature film releases, Casshern and Goemon, then see if the seeds of Sucker Punch’s visual style weren’t planted in those gritty, CG-laden live-action anime. The CG in Sucker Punch does have its moments—a colossal dragon and some creepy giant samurai being the best examples—but generally it handicaps the movie into becoming the video game it so desperately wants to be. This is Gears of War writ large(r) with a sexy squad of soldiers facing down more epic movie clichés than the aliens in the Kia “Epic” commercial. This attention to eye-candy characters and spectacle is quickly becoming Snyder’s calling card and it makes me very concerned for the future of the Superman franchise. Here’s hoping we avoid Lois Lane in a leather corset fighting the denizens of Apokolips with a M5 in one hand and a samurai sword in the other.

Full disclosure: I’ve been waiting for Sucker Punch since last year’s Comic-Con. While my anticipation wasn’t at fever pitch, it was pretty high. So, to say I’m disappointed is beyond an understatement. I was preparing for what could’ve been, at bare minimum, one of the coolest visual experiences of the spring. But maybe I should’ve paid more attention to the tagline because I was not be prepared for a movie this bad.