Sucker Punch

Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving sexuality, violence and combat sequences, and for language.

Anyone who sees Sucker Punch is a sucker and is punched in the gut with a bag of cinematic claptrap. At the theater I attended — just as the titles began to roll — some film connoisseur let out a window-rattling belch. That probably sums up the target audience the producers were trying to attract. I had to go see it because I have journalistic responsibilities.  That is my excuse. If I had a choice, I would have been unsuckered and punchless.

I can’t make up my mind if the film was based on a computer game, a graphic novel, or a hallucination caused by food poisoning. Whatever the cause, the movie should be avoided (along with botulism) at all cost.

A young woman (17 perhaps?) lives with her sister, her mom, and her gross, fat, and sweaty stepfather. Mom dies (probably killed by stepdad). The mother’s corpse is hardly out the door when the slob goes to rape his stepdaughters. A series of mishaps occur and the eldest accidently kills the youngest. Ugly Papa takes the accidental killer to a grimy, gothic-looking, loony bin inhabited by very young and comely girls. Did I tell you her name? It is Babydoll (played by Emily Browning). No joke. And this isn’t even Japanese Anime.

She makes friends straight off. Her BFFs are: Amber, Sweet Pea, Blondie, and Rocket; three Barbie blondes, an Asian, and a dark skinned beauty of mixed ethnicity; the perfect lineup for a sit-com about pole dancing strippers. Alas, they keep their clothes on.

The asylum has a female Polish psychiatrist who looks as if she is into bondage, a weaselly head orderly who might star in a remake of Chico and the Man (playing Chico), and a menagerie of revolting male characters that might hang out at a bus station at 3 am.  

Anyway, Babydoll descends into a fantasy world of her own creation. The nut house becomes a brothel. Why she would fantasize this and not a trip to Aspen, I don’t know. The staff make the patients put on burlesque productions for high-paying clients.

Fascinatingly, when Babydoll dances (in rehearsals and in actual productions), she puts everybody (but her gal pals) in a trance. While putting people in this paralytic state, she goes into yet another fantasy of hers; five separate fantasies actually. Each time the girls battle a unique enemy including re-animated Nazi corpses, dragons and dragon soldiers…and some other types that I have already forgotten.

So, it is a fantasy in a fantasy. This is a very cheesy, pre-adolescent, mutton-brained version of Inception. The point of this steaming pile of mess is that while the others are slack-jawed and helpless, the girls are able to go on a scavenger hunt for items in the institution and eventually escape.

Scott Glenn plays a Yoda character but in three or four different costumes. They probably wanted David Carradine but he is unavailable since he is dead. Glenn is sort of the wise coach and bar-stool philosopher to Babydoll and the girls. Mr. Glenn should consider suing his agent for being associated with this career killing crud. And Jon Hamm plays two roles: a lobotomist and some big shot client of the brothel. Oh, the pain and the shame! What were these guys thinking?

Sucker Punch clearly is heavy on computer graphics. So much so that the cast probably filmed the entire movie in Beavis and Butthead’s garage and then sent it to Steve Jobs to run it through two Macs and an old Commodore 64.

Really, dear readers, I should have left as soon as the guy in the back burped. It was a foreshadowing.

I have never seen a movie hyped so much on TV or in trailers in theaters. Honestly! The budget for this waste of time was 82 million bucks; two million for the movie and eighty million for marketing.

Please make them regret the expense.  

Sucker Punch barely earns a half a bow tie.