You open this door with the key of imagination...
Oh, sorry. Never mind.
Writing any kind of coherent critique after suffering an all-out sensory assault like that would be rather a struggle. But then an actual block of words, one after another, hardly befits the Zac Snyder school of creative expression. I don't want my audience to get bored. So I'm just gonna go with staccato sentences and bullet points:
* I noticed no obvious product placement, so that's a positive. Sucker Punch may look like the longest trailer ever made tagged onto the longest slo-mo video game demo ever made, and interspersed with four or five of the longest music videos ever made, but at least it's not just the longest commercial ever made, right?
* I doubt there was ever a market for them before, but now the world has been presented with Emily Browning, I'm sure a line of sad-faced blow-up dolls will be in high demand.
* The last film I saw so excessively, wearingly CGI-drenched had Stephen Sommers' name attached to it. The difference being that while Sommers' movies may have only minimal plot, they do actually have some.
* The gunmen robots (everything the iRobots in I, Robot should have been) were my favourite of all the cannon fodder on screen, and actually the only legitimately cool thing I found in the whole film. I mean, giant Samurai, crap CG dragons and zombie Nazis? Been done, hasn't it?
Nice to see the Orcs still in work, mind.
* Yes, the soundtrack was wicked- that particular version of "Army of Me" really has to be experienced in bone-rattling surround sound- but soundtrack awesomeness is very often in inverse proportion to the quality of the film itself, this being a perfect example. I mean, Resident Evil: Apocalypse had a brilliant soundtrack.
* Was it just me who couldn't shake the feeling that Scott Glenn's vaguely Zen, bon mot-spouting Wise Man character was written for Leonard Nimoy?
"Oh, and one more thing... Live long and prosper. And watch your asses."
* Actually, I should go easy on Glenn. Bringing some gravitas to the proceedings was obviously his function here
Beg Your Pardon, I Just Need To Blink In Slow-Motion
by virtue of him being the only cast member not to deliver their dialogue as if speaking English as a second language. Though that's largely the fault of the script.
* I could just about see what the director thought he was doing here. But Snyder shot himself in the foot right from the opening sequence (which really looked as if it was put together with t.A.T.u's "All the Things She Said" in mind). More on this later. What I could see very clearly was the director's hard-on.
As a serious leg man, I should perhaps have been more enthused, this being not so much a work of a cinema as a hymn to the shapely thigh, with provocative heels and hosiery aplenty...
You might say I'm a "sucker" for this kind of thing. But then I'd have to "punch" you in the cock.
But no.
This is a sterile, sexless exercise in cheap kink. Even supremo of sleaze Russ Meyer managed to imbue his movies with a sweaty, voyeuristic atmosphere that demonstrated he grasped (oo-er!) at least one aspect of genuine lust, even if the films themselves left you in urgent want of a bath and a confessional. Here, Snyder's approach to lady flesh is much the same as his (and Stephen Sommers' and George Lucas') to CGI. He simply throws everything 'cool' he can think of at the screen, arrogantly assuming we, the pulic will lap it up. As my favourite SFX reviewer, Nick Setchfield once put it, "there comes a point where your senses simply refuse to process anymore awe". The non-stop eye candy provokes nothing but nausea.
After that point, all one can think is how ridiculous it is, dream reality or not, for the girls to still be wearing their fishnets, bustiers and platforms whilst working in the kitchens or scrubbing the floors.
Oh dear, that was rather a long bit. Not very exciting. Here's a young lady with a big gun.
Still with me?
* Since we never actually see any of Babydoll's supposedly mesmerisingly-erotic dancing, Snyder probably thinks himself immune to the charge of salaciousness. He sure wouldn't be the first filmmaker to think putting weapons into the hands of scantily-clad ciphers makes him a feminist.
* Oscar Isaac made for a excellent scumbag, but then it's hard not like a guy who shoots Vanessa Hudgens.
* All the voice-over waffle about angels is fine, until we reach the last act and we're made to think it was intended figuratively (thank fuck, says the audience), aaaaand then we find the Wise Man, who apparently has no connection to the real Babydoll at all, turning up in her reality as Sweet Pea's actual guardian angel.
Speaking of reality...
* For the central conceit to work at all, we need a solid founding in a recognisably 'real' world. In theory, the real version of Babydoll is the mute girl whose scenes bookend the story, but these portions of the film resemble nothing so much as the opening of Return to Oz remade by Rob Zombie. Even if you can swallow the glamorously Tim Burtonish nightmare asylum, and further suspend your disbelief to accept that the inmate population consists entirely of slim, enticingly grubby young women, there's still the tiny issue of Babydoll's always immaculate layer of inches-thick make-up. And her amazing ability to take a surgical pick through the eye orbit without so much as a scratch.
* What's the US national debt now? The mascara budget alone for this flick might have eased things dramatically.
* The ending, let's be clear on this, is by no means a clever subversion, nor even a decent plot-twist. We learn that Babydoll is really a disturbed girl who accidentally killed her little sister, which makes you wonder if the step-father had her lobotomised out of grief-stricken revenge more than anything. You'll note that the dark haired little sister bears no resemblance to Babydoll herself; perhaps Evil Stepdad was the younger girl's biological father? It's clear Baby was dillusional, so it's entirely possible her perception of everything was distorted and she was never a victim at all.
* And OK, the real Babydoll helps the real Sweet Pea escape. But since we learn absolutely nothing about the real Sweet Pea, who doesn't seem at all insane, and there's nothing to suggest that Rocket's biefly-glimpsed real world analogue is either a) her sister, or b) dead, it pretty much renders the (deep breath) character arcs of both entirely moot.
* Finally, the laughable notion that lobotomy=freedom, which still manages to be less dubious than the notion of lobotomy=losing one's virginity, in the female subconscious.
Now I'm left with grave misgivings about Snyder's Superman movie. Aside from the aggressively-soundtracked montage approach not really being appropriate for the Man of Steel (we've all seen Smallville), we seem guaranteed the most po-faced superhero movie since, well, Watchmen.
That probably went on for rather longer than you'd have expected for something so frivolous. Sorry about that. I can't think of any profound sounding bollocks about angels learning to fight monsters or whatever, so I'll just crank up the Björk and be on my way.
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