SUCKER PUNCH: Anyone Who Thinks This Was Good Is An Idiot

Dir. Zack Snyder. Written by Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya. Staring Emily Browning, Carla Gugino, Abbie Cornish, Jenna Malone, Oscar Isaac, etcetera.

Yes, I admit my headline is an opportunistic attempt to get your attention. You might also think it’s an overly simplistic, below-the-belt, immature pot shot at whomever may have actually liked Zack Snyder’s SUCKER PUNCH and therefore, I’m being completely disrespectful. And this is the thing: you would be right about that.

But in my view, SUCKER PUNCH is overly simplistic, below-the-belt and immature. Ergo I’m trying to make a point by presenting something opinionated in an overly simplistic fashion while acknowledging it may be an insult to the intelligence of whomever that comment is directed. Because that’s SUCKER PUNCH in a nutshell: one filmmaker’s passionate attempt to get an “original vision” on the screen that is loud, glaring and blaring. And amounts to nothing. Yet there are critics who defend Snyder’s flick by saying “you have to admire the originality” or “at least he’s trying to say something” or better yet “while I think the film fails, I do respect what he was trying to do.” That kind of thing. And that’s where the perceived insult comes in: you want to cut the film slack because you like the director. Or you want to cut it some slack because you “respect” that he was attempting something different. Or you want to give him some elbow room because supposedly 18 minutes were cut from the film in order to ensure its PG-13 rating. Or, maybe you want to give him some props because – cough, cough – he flew you out on the studio’s expense to show you the set, give you some shwag, etc.

But how about just critiquing the film for what it is?

I’m still wrapping my mind around what I saw last night, constantly discovering new issue upon issue with that which is SUCKER PUNCH. I have no doubt what Zack Snyder puts on the screen is something dear to him and God bless him for that. But SUCKER PUNCH is simply not a good movie nor an original one. Thus bringing us to the bugbear which has inspired this review: if you think this is original or it really has something to say… hell, if you think this is “good” on any level of pure entertainment… then, yes, you’re an idiot.

But allow me a more constructive approach to this.

While the visuals are dynamic, Snyder’s vision is certainly not original. For one thing, the concept of your lead protagonist escaping her/his dire life by entering fantasy dream worlds goes all the way back to Buster Keaton and SHERLOCK HOLMES, JR. Applying it to a musical form was made innovative by Bob Fosse and his film ALL THAT JAZZ. But it reached it’s full potential as a narrative conceit by the late, great Dennis Potter. Now, I am astounded that critics (lovers and haters both) have failed to mentioned Potter and his amazing phantasmagoria of mini-series as potential influencers to Snyder’s film. For one thing look at his PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (both the mini-series and the feature film adapted from it) and SINGING DETECTIVE (again, the mini-series and the feature film adapted from it). Both films deal with protagonists who escape into musically inspired, fantasy worlds to avoid the starkness of their real lives. So by the time the film version of CHICAGO finally hit the screens, this narrative device was already pretty tired.

And, yeah, I’m not going to echo the comparisons to BRAZIL, SHUTTER ISLAND or INCEPTION either, as this is repeated by other reviewers. Hell, TWINKLE TWINKLE KILLER KANE (aka THE NINTH CONFIGURATION) also comes to mind. The problem, however, is that by co-opting a now tired narrative device whose precedent has already been set by earlier and much better films/tv shows (see TWILIGHT ZONE as well), there’s no longer any impact emotional or otherwise.

But even IF there was a way to breathe new life into this choice of narrative, Snyder still fails because there is no cognizance of why that approach worked in the first place. PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, ALL THAT JAZZ, BRAZIL, SINGING DETECTIVE… their escapes into fantasy exist because they directly juxtapose the reality. In DETECTIVE, an afflicted, bed ridden writer dreams of being a Private Eye and the doctors and orderlies around him become singers and chorus girls. It’s supposed to be a better alternative. Made all the more poignant/tragic because it’s a deluded escape.

In SUCKER PUNCH our protagonist escapes her dire reality to enter a… dire reality? She goes from being an inmate in an asylum to a forced prostitute in a bordello/burlesque theater. In my view, and you could call me out for being crazy by saying this, but I’d think the opposite would be true – if I was forced to prostitute myself to horny, wealthy older men while being threatened by obese cooks with knives and psychotic pimps I’d probably strive for getting that lobotomy in the asylum existence rather than the other way around, right? And the reality she attempts to escape from is just as stylized as the fantasy. There is no recognizable “reality” to act as a foundation for the dream worlds to bounce off of. To make matters more confusing (and worse), the protagonist chooses to escape her reality by entering a fantasy of which she requires escape from yet again!

It’s almost as if Zack Snyder said to himself “you know what? I really dig that whole reality vs fantasy thing goin’ on in CHICAGO, BRAZIL, SINGING DETECTIVE. So I’m gonna’ do the same thing! Not only that, but my idea is SO MUCH BETTER ‘cause they’ll be fantasies within the fantasies, get it? Let’s push this to eleven!!” Problem is, a certain amount of intellectualism is required, a certain amount of logic has to come in play to establish rules, the juxtapositioning, the parallels and antithesis to establish intent beyond just displaying really, cool things and it just doesn’t exist here. At all.

Think about it: the protagonist – Baby Doll – is a teenage girl (?) of what looks to be the mid-1960s. Now, what experiences would inform her initial fantasy/dream state? Where exactly does the idea of Bordello/Burlesque Club actually stem from? In SINGING DETECTIVE the “fantasy” segments were informed by the protagonist’s writings and his fondness for pop songs from the 1940s and 50s. In BRAZIL, our hero’s “escape” was informed by a need to be a White Knight, to save a princess and live in a better place, happily ever after, away from the beaurocracy and drudgery of his life.

Okay, fine, now one might be able to make the weak argument that Baby Doll’s fantasies are revenge fantasies – they are about escape. Fine. But why a bordello? Or a burlesque club? Why not just fantasize about an escape from the asylum itself? Aesthetically it kinda’ make sense – the velvet curtains and faux MOULIN ROUGE feel makes it looks cool and affords the opportunity to show off some song and dance numbers which never happen. We never see them. Instead we are sent into another fantasy world.

So… what then informs Baby Doll’s (remember: this is a teen girl of the 1960s) fantasy of being the girl every late 20^th to 21^st Century fan boy, geek, nerd, scifi and Anime fan dreams of?

Okay now stop! I know how you may want to argue against me on this but just hang in there. Nordling on Aintitcool.com says in order to enjoy this flick, you shouldn’t intellectualize it. The problem is Snyder clearly wants you to intellectualize SUCKER PUNCH because, well, why then would he bother with an unecessarily complicated but hardly complex narrative in the first place? While Devin Faraci of Badassdigest urges you to intellectualize it, that therein lies true meaning about female empowerment and all that blah-blah-blah. Really? Dressing up a bunch of generic, teeny bopper types in the kind of stuff inspired by the product sold in Manhattan’s Toy Tokyo is female empowerment?! But no one is “empowered” at the end of the movie. One character is allowed to escape but it’s never clear why… or why as Baby Doll says in the movie “it’s really her story” and not Baby Doll’s. Not to mention, the escaping character in question is still the fantasy construct of that character who may not even exist in the first place. So how does her escaping help Baby Doll to feel she’s accomplished anything?! Is it supposed to be ironic tragedy? Or we supposed to think she succeeded in something? It just doesn’t work either way. So we’re left to decide that there’s no competent meaning there, that Snyder is actually pandering to the minds he’d like us to think he’s being critical of. Devin Faraci seems to be arguing it’s both and that’s what makes SUCKER PUNCH brilliant. I say Snyder is trying to have his cake and eat it too and is intellectually incapable of coming up with something truly thought provoking that’s worth discussing as a result. What Mr. Faraci sees in this flick I simply do not see. At all.

(It’s like the first time I saw THE MUPPET MOVIE. I was a little kid. The friend I saw it with was convinced that something HAPPENED to all the Muppets at the end of the movie. It was, granted, his interpretation but there was nothing on the screen to support that interpretation. You know what I mean? You know how at the end, during that climatic musical number, the ceiling to the studio caves in, everybody shudders then a rainbow shines through the hole in the roof? Then everybody smiles and continues singing? My friend was convinced when the hole in the ceiling first appeared that meant “oh no, the Muppets all lost their jobs.” But then the rainbow appeared and that meant “yes! The Muppets jobs are safe!” Now as impressed with his imagination as one can be, there was no visual or verbal evidence that would support that interpretation, right? This kind of reminds me of where Faraci is going in his defense of SUCKER PUNCH)

What doesn’t help is that at no point do you care about any of these characters. And of the five main girls, only two (I’m including Baby Doll) actually seem to exist in the reality of the Asylum. Therefore there is no real danger. No tension or suspense stemming from whether these guys will succeed in each mission. In response to one blog review, a commentator did seem to disagree with that assessment, arguing that rules are established determining that when a character dies in one dreamscape, they are dying in the other. However, two things this commentator failed to recognize. 1) It is never established at all that the characters who DO die actually exist in the real world. Not once. They exist in either the Bordello fantasy or the Machinima fantasy which means, sorry, we don’t care if they live or die since they may not exist or there’s nothing in the film to suggest they do exist beyond those two worlds. 2) When this so-called “rule” is finally established, it is done so much later in the flick and not until – for convenience sake – the conclusion of the third and last action fantasy segment. And…. Now this may be a spoiler so be warned… this character, the one who dies in this segment… is the only character to die in the action-fantasy segments of the film. Get that? The only one! Does it inform her death in the other scenario? Yes it does but it’s still a fantasy scenario! Other characters are pretty swiftly dispatched within the bordello/burlesque level in such an irrelevant way they leave no impact whatsoever. And again, it is never established whether these characters exist in the Asylum reality.

(Actually, want to hear something funny? There was only one character I was truly concerned about – SPOILER, SPOILER! – The baby dragon. The one they have to kill to get the fire stone. You know, the stone that’s supposed to produce “amazing” fire. But never does. I really felt sorry for that creature)

So, again, where’s the depth? What’s this about “having something to say?” How could anyone care or feel any concern, suspense, whatever for the predicament of these fantasy types?

As it stands, SUCKER PUNCH could only be truly effective if say, each fantasy segment were displayed as online shorts rather than a complete whole. Or as some sort of multi-media installation. Kind of similar to how Matthew Barney exhibited his CREMASTER CYCLE (parts of SUCKER PUNCH did kind of remind me of Barney’s work. Which is kind of amusing to me because Barney’s wife Bjork contributes one of the songs used in SUCKER). And, look, visually the movie is stupendous. Seriously. But it’s like great graphic design. And there’s a difference between great graphic design and art with true meaning. Within SUCKER PUNCH there is a kernel of an intriguing idea. Something to do with structuring a narrative like that of an elaborate, movie musical. But instead of song and dance segments you’ve got far flung action sequences. So that the action beats are timed to the music just as choreography is tied to song. But Snyder doesn’t even do that here and instead resorts to his exhausting habit of choosing way too on-the-nose covers of songs like “White Rabbit,” “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This,” “Where Is My Mind” (yes, Zack, I get it! The song “Search And Destroy” is being used because the characters are searching and destroying. Good God, nuance anyone?!). But the effect is more like HEAVY METAL than say MOULIN ROUGE. And there was a moment where I thought “huh, this could be Snyder’s HEAVY METAL movie.” But then I realized “meh… that would require a hard R. This flick is rated PG-13.”

Now, defenders of Zack Snyder step back. Yes, 18 minutes were cut out of this film to meet the MPAA standards for PG-13. However, Snyder is on record as saying his film was intended to be PG-13 from the very beginning. That was his decision not the studios. Which leaves one to ask (obviously) is there a better version of SUCKER PUNCH out there? Could that excised content provide deeper context for what’s currently on the screen? Don’t know and right now I don’t care. Because SUCKER PUNCH exists as it does now: nowhere deep as it wants to be and way too loud and busy and unfocused to really go anywhere.