New action fantasy is a punchless movie for suckers
SUCKER PUNCH (Zack Snyder, 2011)
Opens Friday, March 25
www.suckerpunchmovie.warnerbros.com
Don’t be fooled by the eye-popping trailers and hip ad campaign for the new action fantasy Sucker Punch; Zack Snyder’s second film as writer-director (after 2007’s 300) is a stupefyingly incomprehensible disaster. In a dark, doomed world, Babydoll (Emily Browning) is framed by her stepfather for the murder of her little sister so he can get their recently deceased mother’s money. Babydoll is sent to an asylum for the criminally insane, where she is scheduled to undergo a lobotomy. But just as the orbitoclast is about to be pounded into her brain, she mentally transports herself to another world, where she is the new girl at a club where hot babes are forced to take care of the needs of wealthy, degrading men. Determined to escape, Babydoll joins up with Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung) as they seek a series of items that will lead to their freedom from the evil Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) and the conflicted Madam Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino). In order to obtain the map, fire, knife, and key, Babydoll performs a mesmerizing dance — which is never actually shown — that sends her and her four Charlie’s Angels wanna-bes into video-game-like scenarios where they are led by the Wise Man (Scott Glenn) as they battle giant samurai, zombie soldiers, and fire-breathing dragons in absurd, overly stylistic sequences that are remarkably lifeless and unexciting. Sucker Punch doesn’t even qualify as a so-bad-it’s-good camp movie; it’s just plain bad, and it’s PG-13 to boot. Snyder (Watchmen, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole) aspires to the labyrinthine tales of Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges filtered through Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez but instead winds up with an overwrought, jaw-dropping mess. Even the soundtrack — including cover songs inexplicably performed by the cast — is head-scratchingly awful. And Jon Hamm, just what were you thinking?