Sucker Punch - How I wanted to love you

To be honest, I entered the cinema favorably bias to the film. It promised hot chicks with guns and swords, giant monsters, different cool scenarios, and lots of ass kicking. What's not to like? Alas, as the credits rolled, all I felt was befuddlement, wondering why am I *thinking* about the story instead of enjoying the gritty fight scenes.

The story of Sucker Punch revolves around a troubled 20 year old girl nicknamed "Babydoll", whose mother and sister were killed by her greedy step father. He sends Babydoll to an asylum, and bribes Blue Jones, the asylum's orderly, to "fix" his step daughter, keeping her mouth shut forever. Before her scheduled operation, Babydoll starts daydreaming that the Asylum is a brothel, and that everyone she encountered was a character in her story. She and four other patients/entertainers plot a way out the asylum/brothel. With each progress they make at escaping, she does a sexy dance (spoiler: nope, you are never going to see what she actually does) that enthralls everyone and triggers another daydream where their tasks become grand missions of epic proportions.

Basically, she's daydreaming within a daydream to execute things in reality. If it sounds complicated, it is, and that's what bothers me.

Audiences usually forgive action movies for having simpler storylines, because we watch them for the ass kicking, high flying, boombastic stunts. This poorly executed Inception-rip-off made it look like they couldn't decide which scenario was cooler, so they did all of them, using IMAGINATION as an excuse for showing off THE POWER OF BOOBS, COSTUMES AND CG *THUNDER AND LIGHTING*.

It's a question of  necessity: Did the movie really need three levels of consciousness/subconsciousness to deliver a point? Why not just erase either the asylum or brothel, then have Babydoll's imagination reign freely from there? And all this I could have ignored if it weren't for the fact that the twist in the end gave me more confusion instead of a revelation.

On the bright side, I did fall for THE POWER OF BOOBS, COSTUMES AND CG *THUNDER AND LIGHTING*, I just wish there was more of that. They have a terrific cast of girls who each had her own unique identity. The CG is fantastic, the costumes are beautifully elaborate, and the OST is so good, at times it seemed like the film forgot it's a movie and transitioned into a mini music video (at least it entertained me more than having to understand what was going on). I had hoped the fight scenes would wow me enough to forgive the sloppy story telling, but they over-used the slow-mo effect to the point where I wanted to scream "JUST PUNCH THE GUY ALREADY!" (it shows the girls lack of athletic abilities too).

Recommendation:

This is better as a video game or a comic book. As a game designer, everything you need is there, you just have to clean up the story. At least the audience would be engaged, and the fight scenes wouldn't be such adrenalin cock-blockers.

For everyone else, it's a disappointing film. I REALLY wanted to fall in love with it. Sadly, it did not deliver enough to match my lowest expectations of mind-blowing action sequences. And this movie is from a guy who gave us the epic line, "THIS IS SPARTAAAAAA!!!"

Go watch Sucker Punch for the bad ass girls, entertaining scenarios and effects, but if you decide to pass it, don't worry, you are not missing much.