Scotty: Sucker Punch is deeply serious and contemplative film about how fantasy affects people's hopes. It can be best described as a true piece of art and will definitely be one of the top contenders for the 2011 Academy Award for Best Picture.
Zoe: Or at least the Oscar for making Bjork sound kinda badass. There will be only one nomination, and she will win.
I’m astounded you didn’t detect my sarcasm there. This says a lot about you, or me.
It starts off with the death of the protagonist's, aptly named Baby Doll (Emily Browning), mother. Her stepfather, enraged at the fact that the mother’s fortune has been bequeathed solely to her two daughter, kills Baby-Doll’s sister and then frames her for the murder. Baby-Doll is sent to an insane asylum and scheduled to receive the ol’ pick in the eye socket in five days. Suddenly, we switch to her fantasy world where the asylum is turned into a cabaret/brothel, the orderly a pimp, the psychiatrist a choreographer and the lobotomy doctor a high priced john. What follows is an overly simplified scheme to escape the brothel with her fellow inmates/patients. The plan mostly consists of Baby-Doll dancing for people, mesmerizing them so that needed items can be stolen. These dances are never seen, but are turned into giant action sequences. Boom! Bang! Skimpy Clothes!
This movie was everything I wanted it to be. Hot girls running around in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world shooting/slicing and dicing WWI Germans (I will refer to them as Nazis because as anyone who has ever read a comic book knows, there are always Nazis) with some plot thrown in to pad. It was a giant video game cut scene and it was fantastic.
Actually, this movie was the closest thing to a live action anime I have ever seen. It had all the key ingredients, school girl outfits, robots, power wind and unnatural hair colors. Also, I thought there was too much plot involved, whenever there was plot it was kinda slow and rather corny. I feel like the movie would of been much better if all the scenes that didn’t have Samurai swords were removed. Because honestly, the plot was kinda dumb.
Also, they were wearing WWI helmets, flying WWI planes, talking about No Man’s Land and referring to the Kaiser, so not Nazis.
It was kind of like One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest, Moulin Rouge and Final Fantasy walked into a bar, found Zack Snyder and they all went back to his place for a slow motion four-way. The transition from Moulin Rouge to Nazi Final Fantasy was clear and well enough done, fantasy by way of a sexy dance. But Cookoo to Rouge was not at all, in fact it was pretty much confusing. “Why is everyone suddenly all dolled up, why are they dancing in a mental.....oh....this is.....a dream? Oh well, there will be robots soon.” I’m still not sure what it was supposed to be. The fantasy is supposed to be where they go to escape the real world but it’s more like they escape the mental institution by escaping to the bordello and then escape the bordello through shooting Nazis and Orcs.
WWI soldiers, not Nazis.
Can the orcs be orc-Nazis?
This isn’t LOTR.
They were totally orcs.
But LOTR has the WWII analogy, and in that scene the girls were killing both orcs and humans.
I’m not sure those were humans but I will concede Nazi Germans if you give me WW2 allegory orcs.
Never, there were no Nazis.
One of my biggest problems is that these fellow women she is escaping with are actually patients in this asylum. You don’t really learn much about them outside of the brothel fantasy, so for all we know Baby-Doll could be help a sociopath schizophrenic escape. And don’t say I’m looking way to much into the plot for this type of film. There are some parts where the film focuses way to much on plot and it gets a bit too dark. Otherwise this would of been a really fun, absurd (In a good way) movie, especially under the influence of alcohol. But the ending just ruined it for me. I can’t really explain it without spoilers, however, I'll just say this, the ending ruins the party mood. It would of ended better with a large explosion.
You see then in the real world for like ten minutes at the beginning and ten at the end so you never really invest in the characters. I mean they’re there and they do cool stuff but the world isn’t real so should we really care if anything happens to them? I find it hard to believe that she managed to team up with the four other girls in Asylum also imprisoned against their will. Honestly, I cared more for the baby dragon than for the chick from High School Musical.
Really, if you wanted to see a movie like this but with a serious tone to it, watch The Fall. The female lead is also way cuter.
She’s like seven but that is a super awesome movie.
And she’s adorable. One thing we need to mention is that the music was awesome, even if it was highly ironic the way covers of hippy music was playing during major fight scenes. It was awesome.
The beginning was a little bit like a music video but, like I said, Zack Snyder played Bjork during a fight with giant demonic samurai. He could do no wrong at that point.
So in summary, would you recommend this movie?
If you can go into the movie with pretty much low expectations in the plot department, I would totally recommend it. The fight scenes are so much fun both to look at and to watch and even the bordello has some pretty nice visuals. The acting is pretty good and there are even a few slight surprises. Also, Jon Hamm’s in the movie so there’s your price of admission right there.
I agree, especially on the Hamm part. He is one sexy beast. Other than him, this movie can be fully enjoyable if you take everything with a grain of salt.
They were totally Nazis.
1 comment:
I agree that it was like Anime... especially that subset where the plot is largely non-sensical. They look awesome but are completely incomprehensible, and I sit there thinking "What the hell?" Zack Snyder must have sat through those same ones and thought "Awesome!"
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