Big-budget, steam-punk flavoured junk.

Rating: 4/10 (2 July 2011)

After attempting to shoot her abusive stepfather, but accidentally killing her sister instead, blonde hottie Babydoll (Emily Browning) is sent to a home for the mentally insane where dear old step-daddy pays a member of staff to organise a lobotomy for the traumatised girl. In the five days leading up to the operation, Babydoll plans to escape with the help of several equally attractive female inmates (played by Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung), but repeatedly retreats into an elaborate, make-believe realm to help her cope with her situation.
Director Zack Snyder was the man responsible for the historically inaccurate, CGI-laden, homo-erotic movie adaptation of Frank Miller's '300', which bored the hell out of me thanks to an over-reliance on CGI effects, the absence of anything resembling a decent plot, waaay too much slow motion, and the fact that buffed-up Spartans really aren't my thing.
Sucker Punch thankfully replaces the lightly oiled pectorals and abs with tantalising shots of scantily clad babes (an exposed thigh here, a bare midriff there), but still suffers from a glut of digital trickery (to realise Babydoll's amazingly detailed, steampunk-styled, imaginary world), a total lack of substance, and Snyder's continual misguided belief that playing out matters at half-speed (to the strains of a dreadful emo-goth-pop soundtrack) somehow lends emotional gravitas or dramatic intensity to proceedings. Also a major detraction is the fact that at no point during the film are the girls ever in real danger, all of the incredible action—the battles against stone samurai, zombie Nazis and fire breathing dragons—only ever occurring in the mind of Babydoll.
But perhaps most irritating thing of all about Sucker Punch are Snyder's desperate attempts to disguise the film as anything other than the masturbatory fantasy it so obviously is, the thin veneer of female empowerment, confusing 'dreamworlds-within-a-dreamworld' set-up, and emo-friendly themes of sacrifice and redemption not fooling this viewer for a second.