Jason KingSuckerpunch (4/10)
April 3rd 2011 21:34
:
Convoluted Visual Splendour
Category: Reviews
"Close your eyes. Open your mind. You will be unprepared.
Sucker Punch is an epic action fantasy that takes us into the vivid imagination of a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, and her incredible adventures blur the lines between what's real and what is imaginary.
She has been locked away against her will, but Babydoll (Emily Browning) has not lost her will to survive. Determined to fight for her freedom, she urges four other young girls - the outspoken Rocket (Jena Malone), the street-smart Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), the fiercely loyal Amber (Jamie Chung) and the reluctant Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) - to band together and try to escape their terrible fate at the hands of their captors, Blue (Oscar Isaac), Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino) and the High Roller (Jon Hamm).
Led by Babydoll, the girls engage in fantastical warfare against everything from samurais to serpents, with a virtual arsenal at their disposal. Together, they must decide what they are willing to sacrifice in order to stay alive. But with the help of a Wise Man (Scott Glenn), their unbelievable journey - if they succeed - will set them free."
What a shame shame shame. I am a huge Zack Snyder fan. I LOVED 300, Snyder was the first person I interviewed for Watchmen (he is such a nice person) and I thought Legends of the Guardians was superb. But this film, Suckerpunch, is a convoluted mess that looks spectacular. I am all about visuals - everything I do is inspired or motivated by visuals - it's just the way I am wired but like I explained to Seb after the film, "there are only so many visuals the body can appreciate before they lose their gloss if they have no meaning". This film has one of the best opening sequences ever recorded. It is just superb and Snyder knows how to make things look spectacular. He also knows how to make something look and sound pop art. The sound track of the film is just superb and the visuals are some of the best you will ever see. I can even forgive him for stealing Orcs straight off the set of Lord of the Rings for some scenes but I can't forgive him for the convoluted trash that ends up being some sort of excuse for a plot.
This is a film straight from the imagination of a twelve year old boy who is asleep on his ritalin. It is a pastiche of fanboy images that throws in Orcs, dragons, sci fi, bombs, flying, manga, half naked girls in school girl uniforms or underwear plus shooting, sword fighting and pretty much anything else you can think of straight out of a comic book.
So the story is a girl and her sister are stuck with a hideous stepdad after their mother dies, the stepdad is a molester who only wants the money that was left to the kids. The stepdad tries to molest the younger daughter so the older daughter, Baby Doll, tries to shoot him but misses and shoots her sister. The stepdad throws her in a mental institute and bribes the head orderly to have her lobotomised. She has 5 days until lobotomisation. In this time she enters a screwed up mental fantasy land. She comes up with a plan to escape. The plan is to dance for people while the other girls steal 4 things a crazy monk-like military commander tells her she must steal to get out. The annoying thing is we never see her dance, we see people cheering at the end of each dance, in the actual dance we enter a different military exercise where the girls have to take on something huge and nasty to get the said item - for example for the fire they have to steal they have to kill a dragon or two. But we know the military exercise is not real because she is dancing in a mental institute, but we also know the dancing is not real because she is in a mental institute and not really the dancing prostitute she thinks she is. We know Blue is the man that runs the place but then we find out he isn't - he is just an orderly. As you can see it is all over the place.
SPOILER ALERT IN NEXT PARAGRAPH:
The mission of the entire film is for the girls to escape - they face dragons, stone giant sword fighters and a pig like chef to get out. If that is the case then it would be good if quite a few of them actually escaped. Why would you, all of a sudden, kill 80% of your cast in the last 15mins of the film? The conclusion and end of the story where Snyder attempts to bring the mess back together just gets ruined when it loses its purpose. As Dave said "he killed his own story and any chance for people to like it".
The film is 5 superbly produced individual music video clips. That's all it is - each individual clip is brilliant and would sell records and dvds. The girls all look brilliant as teenage lust objects. Emily Browning is so petite and delicate and mouth agape beautiful. She is so tiny and very shy - her and Abbie Cornish introduced the premiere last night and Abbie said "I hope you just love the film, it is so complex with so many layers to it" - RUBBISH
Two lovely girls and Emily has grown up so much since being the little girl in Lemony Snickets. The premiere itself was a mess of organisation - they made a huge tunnel through the entrance of George St Cinemas with press on one side and scantily clad ninja like girls in school uniforms on the other. I scored one very close kick to the head from a ninja girl and wasn't expecting it - she nearly got slammed in the head with a tin of wasabi peas. The corridor was so tight we were wedged between a wall while B grade Aussie celebs got photographed by media. It was a fire trap waiting to happen. The Bondi Rescue guys sat in front of us and I nearly jumped the row to give Maxxie (Trent Maxwell) a hug for making fully fledged lifeguard. This was the one good thing of the pre premiere as trey started the film 35mins late while we sat there and about 50 people known as "Facebook VIPs" got personal time in a secluded area with the stars of the show - this was not cool for the rest of us. Kudos to Event Cinemas though who managed to offer up their best presentation onscreen in a few years. Not one mistake.
The acting is good for what they have - which was basically a green screen nightmare for their scenes. Browning was easily my standout - loved the look of her and she just makes every shot sparkle, Abbie Cornish was way too old for the part, she looked more like the mum of the group, I wanted Vanessa Hudgens dead before the film even began, although she at least got to dress more like her personality and not the innocent look she loathed for High School Musical (move on Zac - she isn't good for you hahaa), I loved Jena Malone (she has the cutest mouth) and Jamie Chung is stunning. I did not understand the need for Carla Gugino to have the ridiculous accent while playing Dr Gorski - she is beautiful but the accent was hideous. I love Scott Glenn in anything but he has fallen a long way from Silence of the Lambs to teenage boy pop film.
As one reviewer stated "this is a poor man's Inception with much more cleavage and plot holes". Or this one "A great movie if you are a psychotic fan of Emily Browning's bellybutton." LOL. Snyder has advanced with his visuals to a new level and it is amazing - give him a new Star Wars film or something with a pre written story. His advancement in visuals seems to have been made at the expense of anything coherent in the plot. The film releases this Thursday and I doubt you will be a fan unless totally stoned and 16yrs old - it's school girl COD fantasy Worth 4 out of 10 unfortunately.
Sucker Punch is an epic action fantasy that takes us into the vivid imagination of a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, and her incredible adventures blur the lines between what's real and what is imaginary.
She has been locked away against her will, but Babydoll (Emily Browning) has not lost her will to survive. Determined to fight for her freedom, she urges four other young girls - the outspoken Rocket (Jena Malone), the street-smart Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), the fiercely loyal Amber (Jamie Chung) and the reluctant Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) - to band together and try to escape their terrible fate at the hands of their captors, Blue (Oscar Isaac), Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino) and the High Roller (Jon Hamm).
Led by Babydoll, the girls engage in fantastical warfare against everything from samurais to serpents, with a virtual arsenal at their disposal. Together, they must decide what they are willing to sacrifice in order to stay alive. But with the help of a Wise Man (Scott Glenn), their unbelievable journey - if they succeed - will set them free."
What a shame shame shame. I am a huge Zack Snyder fan. I LOVED 300, Snyder was the first person I interviewed for Watchmen (he is such a nice person) and I thought Legends of the Guardians was superb. But this film, Suckerpunch, is a convoluted mess that looks spectacular. I am all about visuals - everything I do is inspired or motivated by visuals - it's just the way I am wired but like I explained to Seb after the film, "there are only so many visuals the body can appreciate before they lose their gloss if they have no meaning". This film has one of the best opening sequences ever recorded. It is just superb and Snyder knows how to make things look spectacular. He also knows how to make something look and sound pop art. The sound track of the film is just superb and the visuals are some of the best you will ever see. I can even forgive him for stealing Orcs straight off the set of Lord of the Rings for some scenes but I can't forgive him for the convoluted trash that ends up being some sort of excuse for a plot.
This is a film straight from the imagination of a twelve year old boy who is asleep on his ritalin. It is a pastiche of fanboy images that throws in Orcs, dragons, sci fi, bombs, flying, manga, half naked girls in school girl uniforms or underwear plus shooting, sword fighting and pretty much anything else you can think of straight out of a comic book.
So the story is a girl and her sister are stuck with a hideous stepdad after their mother dies, the stepdad is a molester who only wants the money that was left to the kids. The stepdad tries to molest the younger daughter so the older daughter, Baby Doll, tries to shoot him but misses and shoots her sister. The stepdad throws her in a mental institute and bribes the head orderly to have her lobotomised. She has 5 days until lobotomisation. In this time she enters a screwed up mental fantasy land. She comes up with a plan to escape. The plan is to dance for people while the other girls steal 4 things a crazy monk-like military commander tells her she must steal to get out. The annoying thing is we never see her dance, we see people cheering at the end of each dance, in the actual dance we enter a different military exercise where the girls have to take on something huge and nasty to get the said item - for example for the fire they have to steal they have to kill a dragon or two. But we know the military exercise is not real because she is dancing in a mental institute, but we also know the dancing is not real because she is in a mental institute and not really the dancing prostitute she thinks she is. We know Blue is the man that runs the place but then we find out he isn't - he is just an orderly. As you can see it is all over the place.
SPOILER ALERT IN NEXT PARAGRAPH:
The mission of the entire film is for the girls to escape - they face dragons, stone giant sword fighters and a pig like chef to get out. If that is the case then it would be good if quite a few of them actually escaped. Why would you, all of a sudden, kill 80% of your cast in the last 15mins of the film? The conclusion and end of the story where Snyder attempts to bring the mess back together just gets ruined when it loses its purpose. As Dave said "he killed his own story and any chance for people to like it".
The film is 5 superbly produced individual music video clips. That's all it is - each individual clip is brilliant and would sell records and dvds. The girls all look brilliant as teenage lust objects. Emily Browning is so petite and delicate and mouth agape beautiful. She is so tiny and very shy - her and Abbie Cornish introduced the premiere last night and Abbie said "I hope you just love the film, it is so complex with so many layers to it" - RUBBISH
Two lovely girls and Emily has grown up so much since being the little girl in Lemony Snickets. The premiere itself was a mess of organisation - they made a huge tunnel through the entrance of George St Cinemas with press on one side and scantily clad ninja like girls in school uniforms on the other. I scored one very close kick to the head from a ninja girl and wasn't expecting it - she nearly got slammed in the head with a tin of wasabi peas. The corridor was so tight we were wedged between a wall while B grade Aussie celebs got photographed by media. It was a fire trap waiting to happen. The Bondi Rescue guys sat in front of us and I nearly jumped the row to give Maxxie (Trent Maxwell) a hug for making fully fledged lifeguard. This was the one good thing of the pre premiere as trey started the film 35mins late while we sat there and about 50 people known as "Facebook VIPs" got personal time in a secluded area with the stars of the show - this was not cool for the rest of us. Kudos to Event Cinemas though who managed to offer up their best presentation onscreen in a few years. Not one mistake.
The acting is good for what they have - which was basically a green screen nightmare for their scenes. Browning was easily my standout - loved the look of her and she just makes every shot sparkle, Abbie Cornish was way too old for the part, she looked more like the mum of the group, I wanted Vanessa Hudgens dead before the film even began, although she at least got to dress more like her personality and not the innocent look she loathed for High School Musical (move on Zac - she isn't good for you hahaa), I loved Jena Malone (she has the cutest mouth) and Jamie Chung is stunning. I did not understand the need for Carla Gugino to have the ridiculous accent while playing Dr Gorski - she is beautiful but the accent was hideous. I love Scott Glenn in anything but he has fallen a long way from Silence of the Lambs to teenage boy pop film.
As one reviewer stated "this is a poor man's Inception with much more cleavage and plot holes". Or this one "A great movie if you are a psychotic fan of Emily Browning's bellybutton." LOL. Snyder has advanced with his visuals to a new level and it is amazing - give him a new Star Wars film or something with a pre written story. His advancement in visuals seems to have been made at the expense of anything coherent in the plot. The film releases this Thursday and I doubt you will be a fan unless totally stoned and 16yrs old - it's school girl COD fantasy
Worth 4 out of 10 unfortunately.| 38 |
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Comment by Mr Nice Guy
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Pop Rock Factory
Comment by Jason King
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And I agree - it probably will do ok in the holidays. Teenage boys all need something to gawk at
Thanks for the comment!