Movie Review: Sucker Punch
So I have been looking forward to this movie for a while now, and planned to see it Sunday. However, on Friday I started hearing that a lot of the reviews were coming back as bad, which shook me. The trailers showed a 40 foot tall metal samurai armed with a mini gun. How could that possibly be bad?
So with a certain amount of trepidation I went to my local Regal theater, spent $5 on a Sunday ticket and $15.25 on popcorn, water, and some Junior Mints, and sat in the seat. The movie started off ominously when I saw someone wheel in a stroller (note-if your child is too young to speak and/or stay awake for the entire movie he or she MIGHT just be too young to see a PG-13 movie). Sure enough, the child cried a couple times during the movie. I hold nothing against the child. It’s the incredibly selfish parents who need to be caned. What drove me even more insane through the movie was some adult who fell asleep several times and snored quite loudly. Bastard. For him it’s the scorpion pit.
Anyway, in spite of these issues, I enjoyed Sucker Punch immensely. It really appealed to the inner comic book geek inside me. Steam punk meets Kill Bill meets Brazil. I liked it so much that when I got home I had to look up some of the reviews and see what they were all bitching about. About 20 minutes of reading has shown me something I knew years ago and am forcibly reminded of periodically: most movie reviews are morons and don’t have a dook of an idea how to comport themselves geek-wise, oh my brother. Seriously, they just don’t seem to understand nerd culture. I refuse to help any of these idiots by linking their asinine reviews, but one moron from some rag called the city the 300 came from Sparda (it’s Sparta. Sparda was a demon from Devil May Cry). Imbecile.
Anyway, the movie does have it’s issues, which I will get into in a bit. The story is of a girl who gets framed by her step dad for the murder of her sister and committed to an insane asylum. She descends into a fantasy delusion where she is trapped in a 50’s (implied) brothel and has to escape. There she is forced to dance and every time she does she descends further into a delusion within a delusion (very Inception-like) where she and her friends have to fight any number of monsters, from steam punk WWI Germans, giant metal samurai warriors, LOTR type orcs, a dragon, and some high tech mirrored mechanicals (when I say mirrored I mean that. They pretty much shattered like they were made of glass). They have to find five things to gain their freedom. There’s an older guy who is her spiritual guide and/or commanding officer, a female psychiatrist/dance instructor, and her team is comprised of four more super hot girls; two blonds, a brunette, and an Asian girl. There is one main villain (the orderly at the insane asylum) and any number of lesser villains and henchmen. Violence in many different forms ensues, the story progresses in a very comic book (I mean that in a good way) style, and the story makes a lot or sense if you can let go of your need to have everything in life spoon fed to you. I don’t want to comment on the ending as it could be a huge spoiler, but I liked it.
First the stars. Visually stunning. Two stars. The CGI and special effects were awe inspiring. When you see the dragon it really looks like there is a dragon there. Two stars. Steam punk. One star. Dragon. One star. Giant samurai warriors. One star. Ever women in the film was uber hot. One star. The fight choreography was extremely good. Two stars. While a big part of the story involved Baby Doll’s dancing being hypnotic, they spared us the awkward pain of actually having to watch it and instead replaced it with more gratuitous violence. One star. Most of the sets involved a cool 1950’s noir style that I quite liked. One star. Total: 12 stars.
Now the black holes. The acting from every single character was painfully flat and mediocre. Two black holes. To compliment the mediocre acting the dialogue sounded like the writer spent most of his time writing Wikipedia articles on 13th century pole arms. Two black holes. You spend most of the movie fighting against an overwhelming feeling of injustice. One black hole. The girls names grind on you after a while (Baby Doll, Sweet Pea, etc). One black hole. Overall the film really kind of lacks depth, with pretty weak character development. One black hole (although, really, how much character development was there in 300? If you want character development see a Ron Howard film). Some pretty blatant holes in the plot (although they will bother you less if you keep in mind the whole film is seen through the eyes of an insane young girl). One black hole. Total: 8 black holes.
Grand total: 4 stars. Not a great score, and if you like movies and plots that make sense you might want to give this one a pass. However, it’s not a bad score and if you like visual movies and comic book style plots it is well worth seeing, especially on a big screen. I also give props for not forcing me to watch this in 3d, in spite of the fact that most of the scenes almost scream for it. One less headache.
Weird. I just realized my last blog post was a review of the movie Rubber. I guess it’s surreal movie week. I am sorry I haven’t had much time to blog, but you have no idea the amount of work I am dealing with right now. After Wonder Con this weekend, plus the 40 or more new shirts I need to upload, plus I am moving this week, not to mention my regular job and the fact that I am trying to get a new army painted for July and I am dating someone, I should be able to get back to my more frequent schedule.
Last post’s who-would-win question, Umbrella Corp verses Omni Consumer Products, I’m going to have to give to OCP. Umbrella might have the zombies, but honestly one ED-209 should be able to kill about 1000 zombies. They might be able to get the T-Virus into Robocop, which would be Zombie Robocop. Kind of scary. (OCP image courtesy of the movie t shirt category)
For today, let’s go classic WWW. Who would win, Superman versus Galactus?
