Why I Liked... Sucker Punch (2011)

(Dir. Zack Snyder Starring: Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung)

I really like Zack Snyder. I really do. He’s got big ideas and frankly, I really enjoyed his adaptation of Watchmen-the subject material isn’t exactly the easiest to deal with, but he worked it. I dug it. Snaps to him.

Ok, so that wasn’t a positive thing about the film in question (Sucker Punch), but damnit-you try watching it and coming up with at least one positive.

I didn’t like the soundtrack, I didn’t like the cinematography, I didn’t like the story, I didn’t like NOTHING.

But maybe I should be a bit more eloquent in this. After all, I did just mention how much I liked the director-doesn’t he deserve more? More, as in, a better film?

Yes, yes he does. And so do we, the audience. Remember us? The paying customers (errr...)?

THE, Snyder, THE!!!!

So let’s start at the beginning-yes, the beginning. The whole twenty minutes before our supposed heroine, Baby Doll (Browning) even utters a word. Yeah. She’s a mute for the first twenty minutes. You can see where the so-called character development is going when you don’t hear a word from the main character for the first twenty minutes.

Anywho, so long story short, she gets sent to an insane asylum, has an evil step-father who arranges for her to be lobotomised on the sly so he can inherit her dead mother’s money and property. Sounds simple enough, I hear you thinking. Yeah, so now, based on those not-very-telling trailers, she’s going to kick-ass and not take names her way out of the asylum with a bunch of other hotties dressed in manga video game outfits.

Right?

Wrong! So very, very wrong.

Instead, at the point of lobotomisation, Baby Doll (not her real name, obviously-we never find out what that is) does a quick retreat into her mind. Suddenly, she’s being held against her will at a dance club with a bunch of other girls with suitably stripper-like names. There’s Rocket (Malone), Sweet Pea (Cornish), the not-blonde Blondie (Hudgens), and the somewhat normal-sounding Amber (Chung). They’re all being held captive there at the club, by Blue Jones (played by Oscar Isaac-the Arrested Development connections just make themselves in regards to him), a big bad mean guy who makes them dance sexy dances and...doesn’t pay them?

Or something.

I didn’t quite get that bit. Bottom line, they’re all held captive there. And have a lot of dance lessons. Like, a lot of dance lessons.

Since Baby Doll is new to the joint, she gives them all a show in the studio. Oh, and what a show it is! Until she blinks and retreats even further into her mind where she is now a ninja-vixen and receives mysterious words of mysterious wisdom from a David Carradine wannabe who gives her instructions as to how she and the girls can escape the dancing hell they’ve found themselves in.

God I hope I'll get it! 

  

Five elements, blah blah blah, you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything, oh Zack Snyder, how many times did you watch The Karate Kid before you came up with that?

So Baby Doll kicks the shit out of the three ninja-monsters she’s been put up against, ending just in time for her dance to reach it’s natural end. So now we’re back in the dance-hell world, and apparently Baby Doll is The Most Captivating Dancer Ever In The World. Ever.

Do we see this? No. Apparently this is too painful for her to take, so instead of using her imagination to change the entire situation, Baby Doll just retreats and kicks ass in slow motion. And then goes back to the dancing bit. Which makes no sense. You’re about to be lobotomised-mind retreat? Go for it! Imagined world pretty shit? Go somewhere else! And don’t go back to Shit World!

Could've been an entirely different, nay, kick-ass movie had they stayed here.

The film continues on in this vein for way too long (especially for a film that’s only an hour and forty odd minutes), constantly jumping back and forth between Baby Doll’s apparent dance skills and the girls gunning down zombie robot Nazis and fire breathing dragons. Which sounds kinda awesome, right? So why not skip the whole dance studio thing and go straight for the kicking ass portion, Zack? Why not?

Not exactly on the subject of Sucker Punch, but you know what type of film I really despise? The type of film where it’s all bat shit crazy and mind bending and then suddenly the Twist? The Twist is that for the entire film the main character has been on the brink of death, that the entire hour and a half has been the seconds before their death. That really drives me up the wall.

Sucker Punch does this. And no, that’s not a spoiler because Sucker Punch shows you the ice pick as it’s about to be hammered up into Baby Doll’s brain through her eye socket, shows you her blinking, and shows you her retreating into her mind. So from the very get go, you know that Baby Doll isn’t coming out of this.

So what was the point?