Sucker Punch: Sure, it Has Prussian Steampunk Zombies, But is That Enough?

Whenever you’ve got a protagonist named “Babydoll” you should probably already know you’re in for a bumpy ride, but throw in a gaggle of girls from what might be a Comic Con themed cathouse (”Rocket”, “Amber”, “Sweet Pea” and “Blondie”), a leaden script full of groan-out-loud cliches (”Remember! Don’t write checks your ass can’t cash!” and “You’ve got to live for me, now!”) and a kitschy soundtrack apparently lifted from unseen American Idol outtakes – don’t get me started on what they did with The Pixie’s “Where is My Mind” – and you’ve got a full-on train wreck.

Doe-eyed, peroxide-blonde Babydoll accidentally shoots and kills her little sister while attempting to fend off her rapist stepfather – all to the tune of The Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams” – resulting in her involuntary commitment to the Lennox Hospital for the Mentally Insane, a name that illustrates all you need to know about Zack Snyder: he lacks subtlety and doesn’t trust his viewers to navigate the already shallow depths of his imagination. It’s not enough that he plays that Eurythmics tune, he wants you to know he really, really likes Annie Lennox, and is afraid that you’ll miss it if he doesn’t double up on the references. This senseless double-packaging continues throughout the movie. It’s not so much symbolism that is at play in Sucker Punch as it is Snyder beating you about the face with messily scrawled posterboard signs. Speaking of signs, what does “Mentally Insane” mean? Is there another kind of insanity that I don’t know about?

Anyway, while Babydoll is confined in the hospital awaiting a date with a lobotomist’s hammer and pick, she’s fantasizing that she’s in a bordello waiting to be sold to a mysterious “High Roller”. Meanwhile, the bordello-bound Babydoll fantasizes about escaping, too: She has a plan, and all she’ll need is a lighter, key, map, knife and (I’d say spoiler alert, but this particular jug of milk went sour on opening night) a mystery object. She enlists the rest of the Pussycat Dolls – I mean, the other bordello prisoners – into her scheme to acquire all of these items from their captors, which mostly involves Babydoll distracting them with her erotic dancing skills long enough for one of her cohorts to swipe the needed object. Every time Babydoll begins one of her dances (you never see these, actually) the film segues into one of the fantasy sequences you’ve seen in all of the television advertisements.

These admittedly fantastic-looking diversions pit Babydoll and the rest of The Spice Girls the cast against steampunk Prussian zombies, machine gun-toting samurai ogres, dragons and a bunch of robots that apparently escaped from a particularly edgy cell phone commercial, and even if this is the only reason you’re seeing the film you should know that these fantasy cut-aways are maybe only six or seven minutes long. The rest of the film takes place in the bordello or asylum where there’s no explosions or slow-motion fight scenes to distract you from the film’s leaden pacing and awful dialog. It’s agonizingly dull, for the most part, and even the most committed fantasy fan may start to question whether the short, sugary thrill of these segues is enough to justify enduring the asylum and bordello sequences that are the meat of the film.

There’s a school of thought that most refer to as “the rule of awesomeness” or “the rule of cool”: it’s hard to explain, but the basic premise is that audiences will overlook the overall crudity of a film if it has enough over-the-top action and flash, particularly if it’s of an absurdly “cool” variety, like ninjas riding robot dinosaurs into combat against Nazi werewolves. If you subscribe to this school of thought, Sucker Punch may be the movie for you. Further, if you enjoy camp films – movies of the “so bad they’re good” category – then you may leave Sucker Punch convinced that you’ve found a kitsch masterpiece. It’s certainly possible that it is, at least to the right person. I will be the first to admit that I’m not that person. To me, Sucker Punch is perhaps the most egregious example of fan-service I’ve ever seen: a dim sum platter of geekish obsessions – fantasy, steampunk, manga – that ultimately proves to be unsatisfying and lacking in any substance. Much like the old cliche about Chinese food goes, you may get your fill of Sucker Punch but will still be hungry again an hour later.