‘Sucker Punch’ a big disappointment

There’s a general rule of thumb that warns against directors’ pet projects because they often tend to be bloated, self-indulgent junk. Well, this was supposed to be Zack Snyder’s pet project. And it wasn’t bloated enough. It was flat, it didn’t have any punch to it, no pun intended. It just limped across the screen, really trying to gain some ground on its action sequences but, alas, nothing. I’m not even entirely sure who’s to blame here. The cast was weak, Snyder seemed to lack energy, everything just seemed to get lost around lots of really big concepts.

And that’s just it. Big concepts. Sometimes they work, but you’ve gotta have full commitment to it. I think Snyder would have been better off capturing this film with a lot of irony. But, he tried to play it straight, and it just didn’t work. There were too many pop-culture references and influences for him to pretend like this was a straight-shooter of a film. He should have taken it, along with his female cast, and run it through the geek machine once more without any pretense.

For those of you who haven’t seen the film, Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is a young girl who’s institutionalised by her abusive stepfather following the death of her mother. Facing a lobotomy in three days, she retreats to an alternative reality as a means of coping, in which she envisions a plan that will help her escape the facility. She’s backed by four other patients, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Brownie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung). They’re all supposed to be super bad-ass. But they just lack something.

I was so ready to just put aside my vaguely feminist ideals and just enjoy the two hours of female combat. And what did they give me? Shoddy FX, almost video game-like, with less than enthusiastic cast members. There’s a certain dour tone hovering over the film, and the cast just can’t seem to get over it. It’s almost as though the story literally depressed the cast and that’s what was projected on screen. I just can’t understand why Snyder would involve such a dark plot with no irony. It’s too blunt, and the metaphors and symbolism get lost in everything. It’s like the visual equivalent of those crappy fictional stories that people write in pre-tertiary school with an immense over-use of metaphors and similes. You know, those people that just used to stick them into the essay for effect and suddenly they were Ernest Hemingway. That’s what Sucker Punch is. Oh yeah, Snyder stuck some “messages” in there, here and there. But don’t ask me what half of them are.

The only redeeming thing with this film is the soundtrack. It’s got some pretty intense, and appropriate, music courtesy of Bjork, The Pixies, and others. But that’s just not enough. Sure, when Bjork’s “Army of Me” kicks in as the transition music that Baby Doll dances to when she retreats into other worlds it’s pretty killer. But am I supposed to just watch the four or five transitions that we see featured in the film, and then just ignore the rest of it? Sorry, one sequence just doesn’t cut it. Watching a two-hour video game with inserts of music videos really wore me out by the end of it all.