Sucker Punch

[modage]

No, this one is different. Dawn, regardless of being a remake of a classic, works as a film. It's a successful zombie movie. 300 is a visually stunning, stylized, action movie. It works, it was hugely influential. Watchmen has great parts, but isn't entirely successful. Duh, it was adapting an "impossible to adapt" book. This does not work, at all. As a film.

[modage]

from my blog:

To get something out right off the bat, I've really liked all of director Zach Snyder's previous films. "Dawn of the Dead" was a surprising remake that stands on it's own, "300" is one of the most visually influential action movies of the past decade and "Watchmen" is ambitious and flawed but still great in parts. Snyder is at the very least an incredibly strong visual filmmaker and the premise of "Sucker Punch" would allow him to go all out: a young girl institutionalized by her wicked stepfather retreats to an alternative reality as a coping strategy where she must fight Nazis, robots, zombies and dragons. The first film of Snyder's not based on previously existing source material, this was clearly a chance for Snyder to get all of his fetishes out in one place. Even if the film was overstuffed with ideas, it would at least be provide for some very cool sequences.

But I was concerned about "Sucker Punch" from the first teaser. Because Snyder shoots such pretty pictures, he's gone two for two with incredibly amazing trailers, but something about this one was off. Instead of thrilling, the film just looked like an expensive videogame. Tried to remain optimistic even when advance word was not great but unfortunately the film is a disaster. The story is as described but Snyder manages to suck all of the fun out of it by making a poorly written, ugly, uninvolving mess. There are no characters. The film opens with Baby Doll (Emily Browning) fighting her evil stepfather after he's murdered her mother but does so like a stylized music video to a remix of the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams."

Unfortunately, this is all we really get to know about the lead in the film, as after this point her only motivation is to escape the mental hospital she's placed in. And it's all downhill from there. The other "characters" are capable actresses in tiny (but awesome) outfits unfortunately standing around with nothing to do. There are some horrible sequences of attempted emotion that completely fall flat as do the action sequences which are completely deadening and repetitive. There are no stakes, no consequences and nothing invested so each time the girls retreat into this fantasy world to fight fantastic creatures set to a remix of a familiar song, our brains switch to "sleep" mode because we don't know anything about them or care.

The "symbolism" in the film just completely misses the mark. ("Ohhh, so the cook is the cook!") There was a real opportunity for a Wizard of Oz retreat into these fantasy worlds but the film goes 2 levels deep (first level: we're in a pretend brothel, second level: we're in a pretend fantasy fighting world) without ever checking back into reality until the very end of the film. And the dialogue is bad. Scott Glenn (cast as David Carradine) gets the worst of it spouting nonsense cliche after cliche ("If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything"). The girls are game for anything but are let down by a story that gives them nothing to do. Snyder wanted to make a film about strong female characters but there is a sequence towards the end when literally every woman in the room is crying and the emotion completely falls flat, it's embarassing.

"Sucker Punch" is an incredibly ambitious, even admirable failure, but the film absolutely does not work. It's a juvenille, leaden disaster but hopefully now that Snyder has gotten this out of his system he can learn from his mistakes.

[Jeremy Blackman]

The premise sounds a lot like A Little Princess.

[Gloria]

I was actually looking forward to this, but these reviews are seriously killing the buzz.  The premise sounded interesting, and it definitely seemed like it had something going for it with the changing environments and charismatic leads (with some girl power thrown in) -- but sounds like it's all show, no heart.  Now I'm afraid going to see this might tick me off, with me yelling at the movie screen "This could have been SO MUCH BETTER!", throwing my popcorn at the credits and storming out.

[children with angels]

I try to avoid posting everything I write elsewhere, but I thought I'd share this piece from my site - if only because my views on this movie seem to fly so much in the face of received opinion. Any conversation generated with anyone who's seen it will also be helpful in sorting my thoughts for the longer piece that I'll be writing.


Sucker Punch
Filmmaking: 3 / Personal enjoyment: 4

Locked away in a nightmarish mental hospital by her evil stepfather, 20-year-old 'Baby Doll' (Emily Browning) turns to fantasy: first imagining herself as the victim of a baroque brothel, then leading the mental escape of herself and her fellow prisoners via an escalating series of battles against various mythical foes.

Save one or two dissenting voices, Sucker Punch has become (true to its name) the kind of critical punching-bag that only emerges every so often - the sort of film that's assumed terrible from the outset, and whose reviews are thus a matter of one-upmanship, each critic eager to slam it harder than the last. What's so strange about that in this case is that this movie, while certainly no masterpiece, happens to be quite obviously very interesting.

I would suggest that the extraordinary degree of blanket hatred stems partly from simple herd mentality - a desire to engage in all the fun, negative rhetoric. But the film also ticks a few boxes that usually encourage knee-jerk rejection - in particular, a focus on manifestly artificial style over plot or believable characters (as if this hierarchy is ever considered a de facto problem in, say, Godard). Equally, the film's very interestingness is perhaps something of a problem too: this is unmistakably a movie with a certain amount of ambition, both in structure and theme, and if you're already primed to dislike it, this is only likely to increase your wrath. Another very common objection is to the film's sexual politics, which I will address in more depth in the Alternate Take. For now, suffice to say that it should be impossible to discuss Sucker Punch's treatment of gender without recourse to the concept of irony. Some reviewers seem to believe they're catching the film out by noting that its main characters have names like 'Blondie' and 'Sweet Pea', or that its costumes are fetishistic an infantilizing. These are clearly things that the film is very self-consciously playing with and (to a degree) parodying, rather than merely presenting at face value. Irony alone is by no means a defence against accusations of sexism, but to ignore its presence is to fundamentally misrepresent the way Sucker Punch is addressing us.

Portions of the movie practice an almost textbook version of the kind of throw-it-all-in-the-pot approach to aesthetics and history that so many people object to in postmodernism: treating imagery only as images rather than engaging with their meanings - hollowing out everything to leave only surface. To wit: at one minute the girls are fighting samurai giants, then steam-powered WWI Germans, then dragons, then futuristic robots, and so on... Similarly indiscriminate is the approach to music: questionable covers of rock classics intermingle with original versions, which intermingle with remixes (in some ways, this feels rather like a cinematic equivalent of the 'mashup'). If this is something you'll object to on principle then you will most assuredly despise Sucker Punch. If, like me, you're willing to take it as a logical extension of the film's committed indulgence in a gigantic game of pop culture hopscotch, then there's hope for your relationship with the movie.

Indeed, it's more than possible to enjoy the film - if so inclined - on the level of its sheer absurd, incoherent insanity, which at times pushes it almost into the realm of the avant-garde. To some extent you have to settle into a quite particular headspace to get the most out of the experience. A frequent complaint has been how difficult it is to feel emotionally involved in any of the madly over-the-top action sequences, since - because we know them to be fantasies - there is essentially nothing at stake (very unusual for plot-and-character-centric mainstream Hollywood). This is true, but I must say that I considered this strategy an absolute treat. As someone who often finds himself dozing during the action scenes of contemporary blockbusters, I greatly appreciated being relieved of the responsibility of feigning to care about the perils on display. Because of this lack of danger, the fight scenes become purely, unrepentantly aesthetic experiences, allowing Snyder's meticulously silly choreography and flashy techniques to be appreciated for their garish beauty and skill rather than serving as mere annoying window dressing. The most pertinent comparisons for these crazy flights into plotless sound and movement are, firstly, videogames (which, again, instinctively raises critical ire - because gaming is inherently bad, right...?) and, perhaps more tellingly, the legendarily excessive musical sequences of Busby Berkley (a poster for Golddiggers of 1933 appears in the background of a number of scenes).

Beyond these depthless pleasures, there is also a kind of seriousness at work in Sucker Punch, which will have to wait to be discussed in detail. Yet to avoid disappointment do be warned that the movie will feature nothing approaching 'real characters', nor does it have much in the way of a credible narrative - in fact, some of its worst moments come as a result of trying to provide such things. It is also far, far, from the unproblematically 'girl power' adventure that Snyder perhaps believes it to be. But it is also compellingly mad, rather fascinating in its thematic and narrative construction, and passes the to boot. I find myself unable to say anything approaching this about most recent action films, thus convincing me that - at the very least - this film deserves much better than near-unanimous derision.

[Reel]

I actually think I might like it too, I've been looking forward to it since seeing the trailer. The only thing I guess I can agree with in most reviews is they shouldn't have pussied out and gone for a full R, but I guess that could also be defended if Snyder's intending it to be female empowerment to young girls.

[children with angels]

So I've now written my massive exegesis on why this is some kind of depressed, angry feminist masterpiece, for anyone interested: http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/?2011,5,299

[matt35mm]

Very interesting read. I'll definitely have to check out the film now.

[polkablues]

I definitely agree that the allegorical side of the film works better than it's been given credit for, but where the film falls flat on its face is at the surface level.  You can have all the hidden meanings you want, but if the literal meaning of what's happening on-screen is disjointed and unsatisfying, then it simply becomes an exercise in criticism, not a personal artistic experience.  I do think the movie will be remembered better than it was received, though.

[children with angels]

But you can't separate out the allegory from the rest of the film - it's the whole purpose of the movie! And if you watch the film whilst aware of its metaphorical logic it is far more coherent. Personally, I already very much enjoyed the film the first time for many reasons, but partly because I was so fascinated by what it was doing conceptually. I agree that it's far from perfect, and my 'masterpiece' reference above was certainly over-egging it somewhat. But not much of it seems "disjointed" to me, taken in the context of what it's trying to do.

[SiliasRuby]

Woah, okay. I had some hopes in this film since it had some of my favorite young actress's of today (and Carla Gugino, one of the sexiest older women I have ever had fantasy's about) beating badass's of all kinds but I wasn't connected. The dialogue is terrible and what they did to one of my favorite Beatles' songs almost seems blasphemous. I just couldn't exactly get into it but the visual set pieces are some of the best I've ever seen in my life. I know what its trying to say about fe  about female empowerment but again, I wasn't emotional connected. Not that I need to be emotional connected to every film, especially an action film but it fell flat for me. An fantastic misfire

Bottom Line: If You Have It on Blu-ray, Its great to put on at a party. Jon Hamm has a cameo is in this which surprised me.