SUCKER PUNCH (aka RAPE IS IMMINENT: THE MOVIE) - 5/10
i'm split on it... i thought much of the fantasy / geek elements were well rendered and exhilarating, the girls were all sicknice (when did Donnie Darko's girlfriend become a hardbody? holyfhghghghgfffffffffffffffff)... that aspect of the film was where it shined. but it succumbs to to the same problems many fantastical/surreal movies fall into when they try to sell themselves to the general public; they attempt to apply a narrative that explains the images rather than letting the viewer just take them in, and the explanations more often then not either fall into on-the-nose symbolism or power-draining nonsense.
while the attempt at being something more is commendable, Sucker Punch is not intelligent enough to support such stabs at psychological allegory. the movie is at its strongest when its being a naively misogynistic mix-tape of various geek cultures, and it should've forgone the "go to your happy place" dream within a dream wrap-around device and just created a genre mash-up imagination land filled with wild characters, over-the-top set pieces, and no explanation.
It's the same way i felt about the Cell and the Fall. It's a total cop-out to just say "well durdeedur it's all in her head". right, cause a hot 19 year old mega-blond is going to imagine mowing down Zombified Steampunk SS Troopers while her luscious Asian BFF is clad in a slutted up military uniform and flies around in an ED-209 with anime rabbits painted on it? i mean, i don't wanna be presumptuous here, i know girls are into this stuff too, but i just don't believe that this particular character has the imaginative capacity to conjure up Samurai Golems with Gatling Guns from her sub-subconscious to run from the sexy dance routine she's being forced to do IN HER BRAIN'S HAPPY PLACE? and the aforementioned happy place is a White Slavery Bordello run by Madame PolishHottie and Bromez Addams?
i guess it could be saying that there really is no where to run, and turning too much into yourself cuts you off, rendering you useless to those around you.... but in a film whose main selling point was gorgeous girls in fetish gear having machine-gun fights with Glow-in-the-Dark Androids and pissed off Mother Dragons... i'm not looking for something deeper. i mean, it's nice that you want to have a brain in your head, but you gotta learn to crawl before you learn to clumsily crash into a pile of psychology text books.
it's like going to the Bunny Ranch to "party" with Mika Tan and Isabella Soprano, and all they wanna do is talk to you about classic literature and music history; yeah, that's great and all... but i'm here to get this erection nursed, not learn something new about myself and the world around me. if i'm here i already know the truth... that i'm a slovenly pervert with the blooming libido of a 12 year old comic geek whose been granted unsupervised internet access for the first time. and you're hot and you're battling magic robots while "Army of Me" blares on the stereo. that'll do, movie.
so all in all... it's not an unlikeable movie. it's worth a viewing for the fantasy sequences and the stellar production design. it just would've been better if it didn't try to make sense of it self. also the pg-13 rating really held it back in terms of the potential sexiness, but whatever. gotta catch pedophiles somehow. anyways... whenever it tried to get "clever", all it did was become more stupid and aggravating. i didn't think it was a completely unlikeable movie, it just would've been a lot better if it didn't try to explain itself and stayed an over-the-top dumb action fantasy with cute girls fighting random amalgams of geek shit. kind of like how cool The Cell would've been, just replace geek shit with morose high art shit.
i dunno... Netflix it i guess.
ps:
holy fucking WANT.
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