Sucker Punch
Movie Review
"Sucker Punch"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: D-
Rating: PG-13
Released: Friday, March 25, 2011
Directed by:
Cast:
This is the dark side of disposable pop culture. "Sucker Punch," a female-driven action drama set in a dreamworld, feels like it was based on a graphic novel based on a video game based on a wet dream based on "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- a description that, under different circumstances, might be an endorsement. But this movie is interminably hollow and dispassionate. It's mindless -- and not in the good way (i.e., fun and frivolous) but in the bad way (i.e., tedious and repetitive).
Yeah, it feels like a video game. Unfortunately, the video game it feels like is Pong.
This is the work of Zack Snyder, the visually minded director of "Dawn of the Dead," "300," "Watchmen," and "The Owls of Ga'Hoole," movies that demonstrated (some more than others) how slickly entertaining a stylish, well-made chunk of nonsense can be. Perhaps it is significant that each of those films was based on preexisting material. "Sucker Punch" is all Snyder, from the story to the dialogue (he shares screenplay credit with Steve Shibuya) to the execution, and it's remarkably lifeless.
In what appears to be the 1950s or so, a teenage girl called Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is put in a mental institution by her evil stepfather (Gerard Plunkett), who's scheming to get the girl's inheritance. Baby Doll and her fellow inmates -- who are all hot chicks; the nuthouse has a strict hot-chicks-only policy -- cope with their dreary surroundings by imagining that they live not in a prison-like institution but in a Moulin Rouge-like cabaret. The girls' psychiatrist, Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino), is re-imagined as their choreographer. The cruel orderly who runs the hospital, named Blue (Oscar Isaac), is the pencil-mustached owner of the club. And the doctor (Jon Hamm) who will arrive in five days' time to perform Baby Doll's lobotomy? Why, that's a "high roller" who's going to watch Baby Doll dance and then take her virginity! It's all very "Muppet Babies."
So Baby Doll has five days to escape from the unescapable Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, assisted by her fellow troubled teens: Rocket (Jena Malone), her sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), non-blonde Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung). (Personalities? Eh, they're all more or less interchangeable.) Planning the escape means getting things like a map of the facility, a weapon, and a key, and each of those mini-missions is presented as a fantasy sequence -- a fantasy in a fantasy, since they're already pretending to live in a bordello. We see Baby Doll and the gang fighting dragons in a gloomy castle, but what's really happening is Baby Doll is dancing for a cabaret patron to distract him while Amber steals his cigarette lighter ... but the cabaret patron is actually just an orderly. I guess Amber really is picking his pocket, but I don't know what the real-world equivalent of Baby Doll's "dancing" is. Maybe she's just standing there staring at him? Heck, maybe she is dancing. It's a mental institution, after all. People do weird things.
Much of this is confusing and trippy and weird, but that isn't what's wrong with the movie. Be as surreal and dreamlike and allegorical as you want to, Snyder. Knock yourself out. But sweet merciful Vonnegut, you've got to give us some characters, man! The action has to mean something -- if not to us then at least to the people in the movie.
Snyder's action sequences, for all their kicking and fighting and fanciful backgrounds and smooth imagery, are completely without impact. Since they take place entirely in Baby Doll's imagination (or possibly an imagination that she and the other girls share?), there are no stakes. We never feel like the girls are in any real danger -- it's all in their minds, after all. The real danger for them is whatever's happening in the mental institution, but they (and the movie) have fled that world.
If you're wondering how a bunch of hot chicks in scanty clothing fighting steam-powered zombies and flying World War I planes and defusing bombs on speeding trains could possibly be boring, that's how. You want to make all that stuff boring? Slap it up there on the screen without any context, like Snyder has done here.
One action sequence grabbed me. It was the very first scene of the film, between Baby Doll and her stepfather. Why did it grab me? Because it took place in a world that felt real. The characters' physical movements had consequences. I didn't know the people yet, but I had a sense of who was good and who was bad, who I sympathized with. The stakes -- what each character wanted, how they were opposed to one another -- were clear.
Those are the basic materials of any worthwhile action scene. After that opening sequence, every minute of "Sucker Punch" is missing all of them.
There's been a lot of discussion about whether the film is feminist or anti-feminist, what its view of female sexuality is. Now that I've seen it, I can say with some confidence that I don't care. The larger concern is that it's monotonous, vapid, and empty. It doesn't matter how much technical skill is evident in the production -- and there's plenty here -- if the story, characters, and action don't produce any sensation in the viewer. This must be what a lobotomy feels like.
Grade: D-
Rated PG-13, a little profanity, a lot of action violence, some sexual themes
1 hr., 49 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
This item has 22 comments
March 25, 2011 at 7:03 am
Eric, great review! I think Snyder has a lot of great visual stylings, but I am sad to hear he went all George Lucas with regards to the character development. The movie sounds jam-packed and empty at the same time. Let's hope the script for Superman is solid with Nolan's deft touch.
March 25, 2011 at 8:58 am
"It's all very Muppet Babies"- best line ever.
March 25, 2011 at 11:19 am
I feel the movie can be best summarized as a dumbed down, white trash Inception.
March 25, 2011 at 11:54 am
"it feels like a video game. Unfortunately, the video game it feels like is Pong"
that was just dumb. I can't see in anyway how this movie is comparable to PONG.
Pong is just one of the first video games and it is not in anyway a bad game, in fact it could be regarded as one of the foundations of the video game industry.
I think what you are thinking is that it is ugly in terms of visuals in today's standards which is why you 'unfortunately' compared it to this movie; Which is very ironic because the Visuals is the just the strong suit of this movie.
I'm sorry for this overreaction, but nice review anyway.
It's just that it is the quote in your review that is shown on RT.
March 25, 2011 at 1:22 pm
I didn't say it looks like Pong. I said it FEELS like Pong: repetitive, static, monotonous, uninteresting, unchanging. Maybe I could have expressed that better.
March 25, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Eric's pretty much confirmed the vibe I got from the trailer, and why I wasn't interested in seeing this. It doesn't matter how awesome it all looks if it doesn't MEAN anything! C'mon Zack, give us at least a little substance underneath the style, and everybody will win.
Is there a video game adaptation coming out for this, I wonder? At least with a controller in my hand I've got something to go along with the pretty graphics.
March 25, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Eric,
Having played Pong myself, I can say that after a while it can indeed feel "tedious and repetitive". Just look at when Wall-E played it. Granted, it was a bit one sided for him, but maybe that's the point here too.
Your analogy is apt.
March 25, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Aside from the spelling, is this guy Snyder some hated distant cousin? He is obviously making a ton of money for this stuff. I want to go see it now! Doh!
March 26, 2011 at 4:39 am
Good to see the inventor of Pong commenting on one of your articles.
March 26, 2011 at 7:37 pm
The pong line was hilarious! The fact that someone felt the need to defend pong...even better!
I also laughed out loud at "the nut-house has a strict hot chicks only policy".
March 27, 2011 at 1:29 pm
SPOILERS
I feel like you totally missed the point of this movie. You have to recognize the symbolic epicness he presents here. It's very deep if you get the plot. It's about her redemption, her guardian angel shows up right before her moment of "death" (lobotomy) and gives her a chance to make a difference. in the end she does so she is able to rest peacefully. Her peaceful composure drives the evil that put her there (high roller) mad because he tried so hard to break her but failed
March 27, 2011 at 6:40 pm
pretty sure the real world equivilent of when she's "dancing" is of her getting raped. cz i think at the end there it's revealed they weren't "dancers" with "clients" they were jus getting sexually abused by the orderlys. could be wrong though.
March 27, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Hey, I just saw Sucker Punch and I loved it. You guys try to get all artsy fartsy and find some kind of meaning or message within everything so that you can lengthen your review to fit a space. Who cares if the movie resembled Pong or whatever? I had not read anything about the movie in advance, and when a certain scene changed mysteriously, I was able to grasp it immediately because I had seen Inception beforehand. From then on, the movie was clear in what the director was trying to illustrate. I totally enjoyed the visuals, the fight and war scenes. There is nothing like seeing scantily clad females come in on a helicoptor and go down into WW1 trenches armed with pullpup rifles and swords to fight WW1 Germans wearing gas masks and WW2 helmets and with eyes that glow red. And then we see a fire breathing dragon? Didn't the Germans have them? I mean, come on, why not just relax and enjoy a flick and quit trying to find fault? Of course, what do I know, I'm just an old man in his 70s.
March 28, 2011 at 9:25 am
2 hours of my life gone forever you sit through all that crap and in the end the heroine gets labotomized with a steel pin through the eye... wtf
March 28, 2011 at 11:25 am
"One action sequence grabbed me. It was the very first scene of the film, between Baby Doll and her stepfather. Why did it grab me? Because it took place in a world that felt real."
This is a great review for anyone who cannot grasp simple symbolism or metaphors. Likewise, you probably won't enjoy Sucker Punch if you can't understand a character without an hour of dialogue explaining things to you. You probably will also get more out of it if you can realize that the characters' actions in their fantasy worlds are not supposed to have consequences. Their actions in the real world are what have consequences and are manifested in the imagery we see. Even though it is a very visual movie, you still have to use your imagination to follow the plot. I would say this movie is closer to Pan's Labyrinth than Inception. If you liked that movie and enjoy great cinematography, effects, sound, and a thrilling ride, you should like this as well.
March 28, 2011 at 2:06 pm
"sweet merciful Vonnegut"
I love that. I'm gonna use that in a sentence this week! It won't be about Sucker Punch (because the trailer alone convinced me of it worthlessness). But the invocation of the almighty Kurt made me laugh out loud.
March 28, 2011 at 6:56 pm
@Aaron
Pan's Labyrinth is an amazing film. Do not insult it so. I actually enjoyed that more than Inception (the whole we-need-to-go-deeper device started getting cheesy).
March 28, 2011 at 7:38 pm
First of all it has an awesome sound track. I agree this movies feels and looks like a video game but i think it has an important message. Snydey states it blatently in the end. we have the power, we hold the key to our reality inside of ourselves. Trying to get things (map,knife,fire,etc.) can bring conflict and pain into our lives and others. While surrender to the flow of our sometimes painful reality can bring an inner peace.
March 29, 2011 at 1:53 am
So many comments straight out of high school....
Symbolism? Don't make me laugh. I'm sorry, but "oh it's supposed to represent something ELSE that matters/is interesting" is by FAR the worst excuse for a bad movie, and one that comes up way too often for bad movies.
I didn't see the movie, though my friends did, their "meh" impression was that 30 minutes of the movie was for college guys like them, and the other 90 minutes were were written for the teenage girl demographic. Take from that what you will.
I was really caught up in the preview when I saw it, but I lost a LOT of interest when they revealed that it's just her imagination. I agree with Eric, and my first thought after the preview was "well, then how does any of that awesome stuff MATTER?"
Things need to have consequences to mean something. This movie seems to have missed that.
I would 100% go see a movie based on the imagined universes if they were turned "real."
March 30, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Youre an idiot, Eric.
April 1, 2011 at 3:22 pm
"I don't know what the real-world equivalent of Baby Doll's 'dancing' is."
Here's a hint. The orderlies in the mental institution rape the girls held there.
We see the heroine escape mentally into the slightly-less unpleasant world of the bordello because the mental institution is so horrible. We then see her escape into the fantasy world where she and her friends kick steam-powered zombie ass because what she's really doing at that moment is so much more horrifying than simply being in the mental institution, and a whole lot worse than dancing in a bordello.
I've seen some reviewers express disappointment that when Baby Doll starts dancing, we always transition into the fighting fantasies. "I wish we could have seen her actually dancing!" No. No, you don't. You really, really don't. And you're missing the point by a mile.
April 4, 2011 at 6:56 am
Eddie,
You make a valid point, however that was the most startling hint I've ever seen.
I'm accustomed to hints like "something you'd bring to the beach" or "bigger than a breadbox".
Patient rape was a new one.
The movie tagline was right, I was unprepared.