Today on the site I bring you no less than 5 new movie reviews—and the only reason it’s not seven is I didn’t have enough time to write a review for Paul and Source Code—so I’m pretty sure that if you’re not interested in this movie review there’s something down below it you might like. Of course, maybe you’re like the hundred(s?) million Americans that hasn’t even seen a movie in theaters this year—a slow one at the box office—and aren’t interested in any movies. In which case, well…shit, there’s just no pleasing you.
Anyway, Sucker Punch…
What Works: This movie is a risk. A huge gamble with limited appeal to a mainstream audience and simply put most people just aren’t going to like it. It’s a weird mix of being both extremely grimy but also unrealistic fantasy. I like that a studio is willing to take a risk, and wish they would more often but this movie might break them from taking them in the future. The reviews were pretty much awful and the box office hasn’t been much better. I do think the movie’s real passion—making women look hot as they fire guns—is mostly successful, with Abbie Cornish and Jamie Chung coming off particularly foxy, but really the movie is an ambitious failure. I like movies like that, it’s better to swing big but miss than to play it so safe you feel like you’ve seen it all before—and no one is going to accuse Sucker Punch of serving up the same old same old—but it’s still a movie easier to admire than to enjoy.
What Doesn’t Work: The movie is trying to be more than an action movie, but it doesn’t work at all. You don’t really feel that much for the characters, all of which seem like cardboard cutouts more than real people, and the fantasy within a fantasy plot isn’t going to make the Inception guys lose any sleep. So you’re pretty much left with a fantasy about female exploitation…that exploits women, it’s a muddled message. Also, most of the action is ultra fake looking CGI with people blowing stuff up in slow motion—which I’m getting tired of—that grows repetitive after awhile. And the main villain is awful. He’s like this cheesy, cartoon gangster villain you might see in Jersey Boys instead of a real heavy that scares you.
What I Would Have Done Differently: It’s so hard to say a good way you could make a movie where the lead character is unfairly trapped in a filthy, hopeless insane asylum waiting for a lobotomy while fantasizing about an escape while also fantasizing about doing action sequences. Which is exactly why I plan to make this my next project!