Sucker Punch: The Review (No Spoilers...For Now)

Got a pass to see Zack Snyder's "Sucker Punch" this Wednesday evening at the Metreon. Supposedly we were supposed to see it in the IMAX theater, but that didn't happen. It was shown in one of the regular-sized theaters, and at an odd hour...10pm. I've gone to a lot of sneak previews in years past, and they've all started at around 7-8 pm, never 10pm. Then I realized something....newspaper writers need to get their stories in by midnight to have their articles published in the next day's paper (yes, yes, it doesn't stop the digital media though). Nah...that couldn't be the reason.


On to the movie. It starts like we've seen in the trailer, girl gets taken to mental hospital where she is going to be lobotomized, and must escape in five days (when the doctor will come). Okay, I'm with you so far. Then there is an abrupt shift into another reality where the mental hospital becomes a brothel. Why? Honestly, I don't know.


So the girl taken to the hospital (which is now a brothel in this reality shift) is called Baby Doll. She is introduced to four other girls. For sake of brevity, you can get their names from the pic below.

The girls are lead/trained by a madam (who is the doctor in the mental hospital) named Gorski, played by Carla Gugino. It turns out that Gorski is training each girl to do their version of a sexy dance to get the clients worked up. Okay, I can roll with this so far.... It turns out that when Baby Doll gets into her dance, she mesmerizes men, and she is transported to yet another alternate reality where she has to find the "keys" to her salvation and freedom before the High Roller (aka The Doctor doing the lobotomy) gets to her. 

With me so far? If you get lost, don't bother trying to catch up, you're already food for the zombies and we will leave you behind. Suffer, bitch.

Anyway, so Baby Doll goes into these worlds and takes the other girls she has met (in the hospital/brothel) with her. How and why just these girls when there are literally a room full of people that are present as well is never explained. In each of these worlds she must defeat a Big Boss while also completing a Mission Checkpoint. Honestly, that's the easiest way to explain it, since it is exactly like a video game. 

If you've played video games, or are even remotely familiar with video games, then these worlds are going to seem mighty damn familiar to you. Add in some shaky-cam action scenes, and a few slowed-down action scenes (although a lot less than I was actually expecting from a Zack Synder movie) and you see where this is going. 

The dude threw the kitchen sink into this one. You've got World Wars 1 & 2, samurai armor, orcs, knights, robots, dragons, steampunk, jetpacks, and a partridge in a pear tree. Okay that last one, surprisingly, wasn't in the movie. Add to it the horrid acting from the main group of girls (the audience laughed more than once at unintentionally funny scenes), Scott Glenn (who has a character that really makes no sense as to why he's there in the first place), and the bizarro reasoning of the brothel reality instead of just sticking to the mental hospital reality, and you have one movie that's pretty badly made. 

Honestly, I could have seen Zack Snyder making the Big Boss scenes for fun and then posting them viral video style (like a lot of established directors have (hi, Mr. Whedon!)) on the web. Why? Because they were the only interesting part of the movie. Yup. Who would have guessed that the eye candy would be the best thing about a Zack Snyder movie? I know, even I'm amazed at myself. 

The movie clocked in at about an hour and 45 minutes. Frankly, it felt like three hours, and I felt like I was lobotomized afterwards. 

Rating: Wait for the dvd rental, or when Netflix starts streaming it. It's not worth the money, otherwise.