In the 90s, all dressed up in OshKosh B’gosh, off my face on the effervescent dust found crumbling inside a Refresher, and thinking that the highest form of wit was repeatedly making statements, followed by an audibly mid-Atlantic Not, I used to break the 10th commandment. Yes, forgive me lord, for I have sinned. I coveted my neighbour’s goods – I wanted Streets of Rage to be mine. It’s difficult these days, to see just why this game, a 32-bit Sega Megadrive linear-beat-‘em-up, held such a thrall over me, and why I’d long to play, bashing buttons and baddies, to the point of inducing a rose-tinted burning in my thumbs. But I generally only got to watch, as my neighbor would endlessly punch, kick, die, continue, win, lose, and fall off the side of the lift in level 7.
Watching Sucker Punch, the latest CGI opus from 300-director Zack Snyder, sent me back to that living room, with its chintz chairs, yellowing doilies and browning Granny Smith slices. There I was, watching a video-game, with characters equipped with massive machine guns and chop-socky martial arts skills, battling giant ninjas, tik-tok zombie Germans in World War I, a horde of knights and their hot-tempered dragon and bullet train full of zealous robots on Saturn in the springtime. And yet again, I didn’t get to play.
And that’s where it all went wrong for me, in this, the most self-indulgent film of 2011. Looking like a mash up of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Moulin Rouge, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and every Saturday morning cartoon you’ve ever seen, it’s a stylised mess, the equivalent of a CGI Mardi Gras, with cinematographic affectation and unforgivably 2D characters. For mash get smash, and that’s just what Sucker Punch does, smashing together a plot with Inception like dreamscapes with mind-boggling action sequences that look like they’ve been edited by a Ritalin deprived 14 year-old on crack.
The story involves the nubile Babydoll (Emily Browning), who’s been landed into the Lennox House for the Criminally Insane, a gothic asylum catering to the most gorgeous of gagas and out-of-the-ordinary orderlies. Awaiting a lobotomy, she copes by diving headfirst into reverie, imagining herself and her cohort of full-figured fruitcakes trapped inside a 1920s brothel, where sex-trafficking is seemingly a better option, and sequined bodices look better (for that read: more boobies) than straightjackets. It’s a tough regime of exotic dancing and attempted sexual abuse, but luckily when Babydoll struts her stuff, all the men are powerless to her charms. We, however, actually follow her swaying hips into the aforementioned dream-within-a-dream computer levels, where Babydoll, and the rest of the Spice Girls (Rocket Spice, Amber Spice, Blondie Spice and Sweat Pea) kill endless drones of witless enemies in an effort to win the objects they need to find their freedom, while their Pimp/Murse Ratched begins to have suspicions…
Sucker Punch represents the first time the Zack Snyder has written his own script, having previously made adaptations of cult graphic novels, with great success. He is a director of fantastic visual flair, displaying a lavish signature style and turning genre tropes into fresh and novel films. All the more reason why Sucker Punch falls so flat, a bloated 110-minute mishmash that flits between extended music video to computer game cut-scene, parading as pro-feminist fantasy what is actually paper-thin posturing. So much time is given to the four distinct set pieces that the characters are never developed beyond a basic understanding of the traits they exhibit (sweetly naïve, hard-nosed cynic, reluctant conspirator, etc.), and there is no sense of danger in any of the delusions they act out. Add to this an overload of zooms and slo-mos, the cinematic tics that peppered 300 and Watchmen, but are here used to the point of parody, and you’ve got a turkey.
Only an 11th hour twist that shows a smidge of edge to the script saves this from complete derision, but everything, from the fights, titillating costumes and boom-box soundtrack are poorly conceived. Still, one of the best films I’ve seen this year. Not.
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