Good concept and visuals, bad movie

Rating: 4/10 (21 August 2011)

Sucker Punch is the story of a group of problematic teen girls (Baby Doll, Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie and Amber) trying to escape a mental institution for girls where they are abused and exploited by its director Blue Jones.
The start of the movie is very promising. It tells the story of how Baby Doll, the leading character, gets to the mental institution. It has a good narrative and terrific music, and, in fact, looks very much like a well-made video-clip.
This being a Fantasy film, you expect the unexpected and you are already open to unbelievable things to happen; however, to swallow the lot, the story needs to have an internal logic that makes it organic, and you rarely find that here beyond the opening sequence and the thin line connecting the different day-dreams. The day-dreaming scenes, are very entertaining, because, well, they are supposed to be day-dreams in which anything is possible. However, once again, thee whole seems like an extended video-clip pastiche, one moving to a different one.
The movie has a great concept and succeeds at creating an unique an bizarre Universe that mixes themes and aesthetics in vogue in modern pop culture (a mix of early medieval, Gothic, traditional Japanese, the 1920s and 1950s aesthetics). The special effects are great,and the action scenes are terrifically filmed, and always powered by a terrific music. However, the script is so thin, the characters so superficially drawn, the nonsense so obvious, and the pretentiousness of some scenes (the end for example) so patronizing that you cannot ignore them.
The acting was good on the part of the always convincing Oscar Isaac as Blue Jones, John Glenn as the Wise Man, Jena Malone as Rocket, and Amy Cormish as her sister Sweet Pea. The rest of the cast is OK: Emily Browing as melancholic Baby Doll, Vanessa Hudgengs as Blondie, Jamy Chung as Amber, and Carla Gugino as Dr. Vera Gorski. The rest of the cast seems to be more a group of extras passing by, despite the cameo of Jon Hamn.
I loved the soundtrack, but there is barely a rest from it. Although the lyrics of the songs are directly related to the story, the intensity of the music is overwhelming and numbing. This is a movie and you expect the music to be at the service of the story, not the opposite!
The fleshy flesh wasn't necessary in the story, to be honest, and it is a bit of a perverted old man's fantasy. Sorry Snyder! I found unnecessary the characters being dressed in sluttish dresses the whole time. They could have carried on the story with the girls wearing jeans and t-shirts outside their dancing areas. Insulting are those moments in which the focus of the camera goes on some of the girls' bottoms!
At the end of the movie I felt that the great imagination, potential and actors have been wasted by a poor direction and that Snyder is your man if you want to get a super-duper video-clip not a movie.
The DVD has a bonus of 4 animated short films directed by Ben Hibon (Feudal Warriors, The Trenches, Dragon and Distant Planet), which complement the day-dreaming scenes. They are good visually, full of potential, but too hurriedly done, and with paper-thin plots provided by the same director, not by the animator. You can have wonderful animation, but if you have a poor story, the rest is a waste of time, money and talent. If you cannot do something well, don't do it at all.
An action packed film full of fantasy, big fights, silly stories, and girls in sluttish dresses. A movie mostly for hormonal teenagers.