Close your eyes. Open your mind. You will be unprepared. A young girl's 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 has not lost her will to survive. Determined to fight for her freedom, she urges four other young girls--the outspoken Rocket, the street-smart Blondie, the fiercely loyal Amber and the reluctant Sweet Pea - to band together and try to escape their terrible fate at the hands of their captors, Blue, Madam Gorski and the High Roller. 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, their unbelievable journey - if they succeed - will set them free.
Genres: Action/Adventure and Science Fiction/Fantasy Running Time: 2 hr. Release Date: March 25th, 2011 (wide) MPAA Rating: PG 13 for Thematic material involving sexuality, violence and combat sequences, and for language. Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution
You could go to see “Sucker Punch†this weekend â€" a lot of people probably will, and a few may even admit as much back at the office on Monday â€" or you could try to make it yourself, which might be more fun, though not necessarily cheaper. Here’s what you will need: a bunch of video-game platforms; DVDs of “Shutter Island,†“Kill Bill,†“Burlesque†and “Shrekâ€; some back issues of Maxim; a large bag of crystal meth; and around $100 million. Your imagination will take care of the rest.
All of these might actually be the same place, as filtered through the mind of a young woman with enormous eyes and pouty lips who goes by the name Babydoll (Emily Browning). Confined to a creepy, windswept New England loony bin by her nasty stepfather in the wake of family tragedies, Babydoll slips through a series of mental trapdoors.
The hospital becomes a brothel, its imperious Polish chief psychologist (Carla Gugino) an imperious Polish madam and ballet instructor, and its sadistic head orderly (Oscar Isaac) a sadistic pimp named Blue Jones. Instructed to dance for clients â€" her virginity is being preserved for a half-mythic customer called the High Roller (Jon Hamm, who also plays a lobotomist) â€" Babydoll slips into a trance and passes, along with four of her fellow inmates, into a digitally rendered maelstrom of swordfights, aerial battles and big explosions.
The men who watch her performance back at the bawdy house also fall into a state of paralytic rapture. Viewers of the movie, denied (or perhaps spared) the sight of Ms. Browning’s gyrations, would be more apt to nod off if not for the incessant noise.
These interminable sequences of overscale mayhem are kinetic and elaborate but almost entirely lacking in tension, grace or visual wit. Babydoll and company leap around like video-game avatars, following the instructions of a crinkly faced guru played by Scott Glenn. “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World†did a much better job of interpolating game logic into film narrative, but even that movie â€" incomparably more inventive than this one at a fraction of the cost â€" could not quite overcome the inherent tediousness of watching someone else play.
The fantasy-action-dance scenes at least offer some respite from the pervasive ugliness of “Sucker Punch,†not only for Babydoll, but for the rest of us as well. Soon after her arrival she is befriended by Rocket (Jena Malone), whose sister, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish, working hard and deserving better), has also been incarcerated. These three blondes are joined by the dark-haired and predictably expendable Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung) in plotting a daring escape from wherever they are. As they scheme and scream and suffer, the actresses go along with Mr. Snyder’s pretense that this fantasia of misogyny is really a feminist fable of empowerment.
It is not just that the women are attired in garish boudoir fashions, cropped schoolgirl uniforms and the latest action lingerie. With a touch of humor â€" with any at all â€" “Sucker Punch,†which Mr. Snyder wrote with Steve Shibuya, might have acknowledged the campy, kinky aspects of its premise. But even as it exploits, within the hypocritical constraints of the PG-13 rating, salacious images of exposed flesh and threatened innocence, the film also self-righteously traffics in moral outrage.
Every fan of the old Hollywood westerns knows that certain crimes â€" sexual violence against women, the killing of children â€" justify extreme acts of brutal vengeance. Mr. Snyder, in the manner of some slasher auteurs of the 1970s, reverses the equation. You watch as women are terrorized and preyed upon, pre-emptively excused from the nastier implications of voyeurism by the knowledge that comeuppance is on the horizon. And since that’s the case, why not sit back and enjoy the show.
You could go to see “Sucker Punch†this weekend â€" a lot of people probably will, and a few may even admit as much back at the office on Monday â€" or you could try to make it yourself, which might be more fun, though not necessarily cheaper. Here’s what you will need: a bunch of video-game platforms; DVDs of “Shutter Island,†“Kill Bill,†“Burlesque†and “Shrekâ€; some back issues of Maxim; a large bag of crystal meth; and around $100 million. Your imagination will take care of the rest.
All of these might actually be the same place, as filtered through the mind of a young woman with enormous eyes and pouty lips who goes by the name Babydoll (Emily Browning). Confined to a creepy, windswept New England loony bin by her nasty stepfather in the wake of family tragedies, Babydoll slips through a series of mental trapdoors. 
The fantasy-action-dance scenes at least offer some respite from the pervasive ugliness of “Sucker Punch,†not only for Babydoll, but for the rest of us as well. Soon after her arrival she is befriended by Rocket (Jena Malone), whose sister, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish, working hard and deserving better), has also been incarcerated. These three blondes are joined by the dark-haired and predictably expendable Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung) in plotting a daring escape from wherever they are. As they scheme and scream and suffer, the actresses go along with Mr. Snyder’s pretense that this fantasia of misogyny is really a feminist fable of empowerment. 
Every fan of the old Hollywood westerns knows that certain crimes â€" sexual violence against women, the killing of children â€" justify extreme acts of brutal vengeance. Mr. Snyder, in the manner of some slasher auteurs of the 1970s, reverses the equation. You watch as women are terrorized and preyed upon, pre-emptively excused from the nastier implications of voyeurism by the knowledge that comeuppance is on the horizon. And since that’s the case, why not sit back and enjoy the show.
