Movie patrons "suckered" into seeing "Sucker Punch"?

Rating: 2/10 (27 March 2011)

"Sucker Punch" could have almost been a career-ender for all the talent involved in making this well shot but poorly written film. It's the perfect example of when bad writers get a hold of a good director and do too many mind altering narcotics. The talent brought to the table as far as CGI, direction and even mild to potentially promising acting all couldn't have saved this film.
If the media blitz for Sucker Punch wouldn't have been as good as they were, this film would have been a catastrophic loss and packed the bags for a few folks tagged to this film who wouldn't have the means to survive it. Unfortunately, Sucker Punch is a $10 script with a $10 million dollar backing sadly. The previews did what they could to sell the little action in the film, but I don't see it doing well in retail sales once the pitch forking reviewers and those unlucky souls that saw the film get done stringing it up in town square.
I feel badly for the actresses, stunt coordinators and even the director that put a lot of hard labored attention to detail into the film that was all built on a poorly written script. The plot transitioned horribly from reality to the fantasy realm and could have been done simpler and easier with just a bit more thought about how they were going to go about it. The other was era issues. The era originally started was that of maybe the 50's. Then in the fantasies, we are hit with a modern arsenal of weaponry and then thrown back into medieval weaponry and then forwarded into robots. And I get it, it's a fantasy so anything is possible. But if it's the 50's, should a cute girl in a sexy cosplay outfit be holding a laser sighted auto magazine AR15 with a silencer? Just saying, stay within a realm of illusion. If you are going to jump all over the place with it, make it within a usable and believable setting.
The direction I would have gone in writing the films was to pull the characters into a dream world and stay in that world until completion of the film and only hint back to the original reality based one. Movies that do an alternate realm of reality really tread lightly when doing this to make it seamless. You see this in well written fantasy sci-fi like The Matrix, Tron... hell, even those dumb ass Narnia films can pull it off.
Lastly, the dialogue and setups in the reality world were just too damn long and drawn out. You sit there for almost an hour before anything good really happens. I am sorry, it just took too damn long to get too damn little CGI payout. The music was all just re-hashed out music from the 90's that for some reason, ended up in a 50's genre movie. I did love the fighting scenes and choreography, which is what kept me from ripping it apart fully. The film is shot in perfect light, great use of shading for characters and amazing setup for the backgrounds of the fight scenes but the film plot is just worthless. Would have made a great films though. Pity, I had high hopes for this one.
Sadly, "Sucker Punch" is unfortunately a huge let down as a big screen sizzler. It would do best as a rental but not a purchasable DVD until it hit the $2.99 bin. Maybe they should have tried to make a "300" Part 2 or something and saved everyone's time as that was what folks were expecting, in all honesty. Maybe next time, maybe next time. Till then, will you be a "sucker" and see this film ???