ZACK SNYDER'S CGI WET DREAM: a review of "Sucker Punch"

“SUCKER PUNCH”
Story by Zack Snyder
Screenplay Written by Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya
Directed by Zack Snyder
1/2 * (one half of one star)

No matter how many bad reviews one may read about a certain film, it can never truly compare to the experience of having sat through the entire production. “Sucker Punch,” Director Zack Snyder’s third film and follow up to his incredible interpretation of Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” (2009) is an unmitigated and unquestionable disaster. The film is a nightmare CGI wasteland of such extreme soulnessness that it makes Tim Burton’s miserable “Alice In Wonderland” (2010) look like a chamber piece art film. Everything in the movie is negligible and there is not even one honest emotion conveyed through it from its characters and even through the possible intent of the film’s creator. Yes, dear readers, this film is truly that awful and if you think I am being too hard on it, just know that I am actually complimenting it by even considering it to be a movie. If you are thinking of seeing “Sucker Punch,” enter at your own risk for you have been warned.

Emily Browning stars as the orphaned and horrifically named Babydoll, who after accidentally murdering her younger sister while trying to protect her from their lascivious stepfather, is unfairly imprisoned into a bizarre insane asylum; the kind of which that only houses fashion model ready young girls who lash out and writhe around on the floor together in untamed psycho versions of caged heat. If life was not already grim enough for Babydoll, it is about to meet its end as she is scheduled to be lobotomized by the Doctor (Jon Hamm) and subsequently raped by the evil orderly Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) within five days.

Before her fateful day, Babydoll retreats into a fantasy world where she envisions the asylum as a brothel, Blue as a gangster/pimp and Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) the asylum’s psychiatrist as a Madame. Babydoll is soon befriended by a gaggle of “dancers” including: the tough talking Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and her gentle sister Rocket (Jena Malone), Amber (Jamie Chung) and the ironically named Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens). And before you can say, “Nobody puts Babydoll in a corner!”, Babydoll enlists the aid of her new friends as she has devised an escape plan for which they will have to retrieve five items: a map, fire, a knife, a key and one last mystical object.

In this sexualized dream world, Babydoll and her friends are forced to stage erotic dances for clients. Babydoll’s dances prove to be so sexually charged and mesmerizing, to viewers as well as herself, that she retreats into yet ANOTHER fantasy world where she and her friends become gun toting and sword carrying warriors led by a spirit guide (Scott Glenn). In these wild battle and rock music driven action sequences, they must vanquish zombie Nazi soldiers, dragons and 50 ft tall samurai demons, with each success signifying the retrieval of one of the items needed for escape. Yet, will they be able to achieve their dreams before Babydoll becomes a mindless vegetable ready to be deflowered?

OK, dear readers, I am of the mind that a filmmaker could be able to make a successful film about nearly anything and even with a story as ridiculous as this one, that feat should still be able to be accomplished. But, I’m sorry…”Sucker Punch” fails on all counts and spectacularly so. The set design and cinematography is repugnant and the daydream/nightmare slow-mo photography, so effectively stunning in “Watchman” is painfully over utilized here. The fantasy within fantasy war sequences play as nothing more than sections of the worst video game you have ever plunked a quarter into. They are loud, excruciatingly overlong, yawn inducing and devoid of any subtlety, awe, mystery, danger or wonder. Any imaginative streaks in the conceptual looks of these worlds is a meaningless mishmash of styles, genres and eras. If anything, the absolute hell of these sequences should serve as a lesson to any aspiring or even currently working filmmakers who desire to utilize special effects in their films: don’t use these cinematic toys just because you can!

It only gets worse when we come to the actual performances in “Sucker Punch,” which to be fair cannot be the fault of the actors as they are really just chess pieces to be moved around in Snyder’s green screen world. While Abbie Cornish and Jena Malone do seem to be trying to inject…something...anything into the proceedings and their cartoonishly sexualized heroine, Emily Browning as Babydoll is reprehensible. She doesn’t even deliver anything resembling a performance. She’s all doe eyes, bee stung lips, tiny clothes and a mouth that is either partially open or fully closed. She is no heroine. She is no trapped butterfly ready to transform into a wasp. She’s a blow up doll and I have this cringe inducing feeling that is exactly what Zack Snyder may have wanted.

On the whole, “Sucker Punch” feels as if we have purchased a ticket inside the teenaged wet dreams of Zack Snyder and it is truly an uncomfortable place to be. Feminists, Women Studies majors and frankly, anyone who loves women would have a field day with this movie as these characters are ones that Snyder really seems to believe are empowering yet they exist solely as sex kitten dream girls. There is just no way around it. There is no subtext here folks, because this movie just isn’t that smart enough to even know what a subtext actually is.

Every woman in the film is dolled up, dressed up in skintight clothing ready to be raped, beaten, or killed by some horny male authority figure. When the women are indeed allowed to become ready for battle as leather clad warrior women with giant artillery kicking ass, it is only through the prism of Babydoll’s erotic dances. For Snyder, it seems that the stripper pole is a means to be a no holds barred fighter against a sexist world and that’s a gigantically steaming load of crap if he really wants us, in the 21st century, to buy into that fantasy.

And yet…as much as I am criticizing the film’s sexual politics, there is a part of me that also faults the film for not going far enough. Here is what I mean, dear readers. If Zack Snyder is essentially giving us a front row seat into his wet dreams, then why is this film rated PG-13? If you’re going to bother to go down this road, with this subject matter and these characters who have to do these things, then at least have the cojones to go all the way! Go for the gold and be an unrepentantly nasty, sexual fantasy like that 25-minute sequence from the R rated animated film “Heavy Metal” (1981). That film’s centerpiece features a mute, warrior woman named Taarna on a revenge quest for the one who slaughtered her homeland. The entire movie and that section in particular, made no apologies for having a soft porn section in the middle of her storyline which depicted her simply bathing and getting herself dressed for war (in thigh high boots, lip gloss, bustier and sword). She is accosted on several occasions, raped (off screen) by the main villain in another section and yet she still is able to decapitate her tormentors with the cold-blooded efficiency of a classic Clint Eastwood character. Or even better, there’s Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s “Sin City” (2005), a gloriously shot and gleefully R rated production that, although it overstayed its welcome, went whole hog into its grisly violent and prurient sexual universe with all manner of deviants lurking around every dark corner.

“Sucker Punch” is a film that wants to be dirty without really being dirty and that also makes the production feel so disingenuous. Going back for a moment to those erotic dances that Babydoll performs that are just supposed to be so explosively sexual. Well…we, the audience, never see even one of those dances. All we get to see is the sight of Emily Browning just swaying side to side. Then, she closes her eyes and wakes up to battle a dragon. It is as if Snyder didn’t want the nation to come down upon him like a ton of those proverbial and puritanical American bricks for fear we would decry his right to hold whatever sexual fantasies he desires. Trust me, Zack Snyder can have whatever sexual fantasies he wants. I am no one to judge anyone else of their proclivities as long as they do not harm another living thing. If imprisoned lipstick lesbians who can fly warplanes and wield swords are his thing then more power to him. But, please don’t dress it all up in CGI comic book special effects and claim that this is really a film about empowerment! That is an insult to the intelligence of everyone who chooses to view this movie and how insulting it is to be insulted by a film this stupid.

Seeing “Sucker Punch” truly exemplifies the statement I use sometimes to friends: I see these things so you don’t have to. I saw “Sucker Punch” and trust me, you really, really, really do not have to sit through this as it is easily the worst film I have seen so far in 2011.