Fresh Reviews: "Sucker Punch"

Rated PG-13 for violence and sexual situations.

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"Sucker Punch" has got to be the flat-out strangest movie to play in wide release in commercial theatres in a very long time. Now, normally, this would be a strong recommendation for me, because having seen so many movies and knowing the usual patterns and cliches I have a serious affection for "weird". But "Sucker Punch" rates as a bit of a disappointment for me, with some individual aspects of it done very well (enough for the movie to avoid a strong thumbs down) but still just somehow not quite "enough".

"Baby Doll" (the only name the character is known by) is institutionalized in a nightmare of an insane asylum by her abusive stepfather after he is responsible for the death of her sister (which he blames on her). She immediately begins a "retreat" into a bizarre fantasy world, in which she teams up with various other inmates of the asylum to plan a break-out... a world in which all of them are fierce warriors possessed of amazing abilities and powerful weapons. Somehow their quest for five mysterious objects in this other world is supposed to reveal to her the secret of how to escape from the asylum back in the real world.

Okay, odd enough premise to be promising... but here's where it starts to go off the rails. When Baby Doll first envisions a fantasy world away from the asylum, she's envisioning ANOTHER prison-like environment in which she and the women from the asylum are trapped unwillingly in a house of prostitution, and in THIS environment she has the further "visions" of the superhero-type adventures, coming back to the house of prostitution to be the lessons from that realm into practice... except that she's STILL not putting them into practice in her own real world! This is NOT one of those "Inception" type dream-within-a-dream situation where you might not understand it all but still have to admire the ingenuity of the filmmakers, this is just plain senseless confusion, and there probably can't be more than ten to fifteen minutes in the whole movie that take place in that asylum. We don't even have any real idea what her relationships with the real women who "play" those heroic characters are like, as we never see the real people interact.

Then there's the superhero realm itself. It's pure video game country, start to finish. The whole premise of a quest to find five mysterious objects they need to escape is straight out of typical video game territory. The visuals (from the man who gave us the stunning "300" and "Watchmen", remember) LOOK exactly like a video game, with the women themselves clearly not really fighting actual giants, dragons or whatever. And the women, these supposedly strong, powerful warrior women are always dressed in skimpy outfits... picture Laura Croft times five. And they happen to be led into battle and given their instruction by a male... granted, he's one of the few good actors in the film (Scott Glenn) and one of the few who seems to really be having fun with his character. (And while we're at it, what kind of an inspirational name is "Baby Doll"?)

Now, I thought the wordless first ten minutes or so that give us Baby Doll's back story are very well done, with a kind of washed-out not quite black and white look that makes her predicament all the more of a nightmare. And both Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish, as two of that "superhero team", turn in fine performances that make their character almost real... and far more interesting than Baby Doll (if only the movie could have been ABOUT them). I've already mentioned Scott Glenn, of course. But Emily Browning as Baby Doll doesn't seem to be able to project most of the emotions the story demands of her, and Jamie Chung and Vanessa Hudgens (yes, the High School Musical co-star... who decided to cast her?) are just blank slates.

There are brief hints from time to time of the movie that "Sucker Punch" could have been, including a twist at the end that I REALLY didn't see coming at all (I only wish I could tell you what movie it reminded me of, but that would give too much away), and a rather clever final shot. So I can't say that I hated this movie. But I had such high hopes that it could be another "Inception", or at least that it had ambitions to be something on that level. Instead, we have a adolescent boy's video game fantasy of that kind of movie, in which a different movie attempts on occasion to break out, but never quite succeeds. It COULD still be interesting to see what Snyder does with the next "Superman" movie... I'm just hoping that it doesn't turn out to be "Superman: The Video Game Movie".