Suckered, Punched

Rating: 3/10 (20 October 2013)

This film encapsulates almost everything wrong with the state of high-concept, blockbuster, CGI-laden filmmaking these days.
To wit: bad writing, bad acting, nonsensical story, bad mixtures of fantasy and reality, over reliance on computer graphics.
But hey, the music was cool! Not even sure if this film could have been saved with better writing, better casting, better acting, better directing. The whole idea is just so flawed at its foundation.
Fantasy sequences, within fantasy sequences, within dream sequences. Muddled to the point where, honestly, who cared? If the "reality" sequences in the mental hospital, the first few scenes, had been a little less stylized, I might have bumped it up a few points. Reality can be drab, and should be somewhat drab especially in a mental hospital in a non-specific past time. However, the drab reality of the mental hospital setting was equally stylized and comic-book like as the ballet school/jail/nightclub/whorehouse, or whatever it was supposed to be.
And that just turned the whole movie into a mess.
And what does the title even MEAN? It could have been called FLIGHTS OF FANCY, or HELL HOLE, or BRAIN DRAIN, or FIGHT TO BE FREE, or YOU HAVE ALL THE WEAPONS YOU NEED, or any one of many other titles that would have been WAY more appropriate.
But I will give it a 3 for the extremely competent CGI work and the great music choices. The fact that those choices were in service of a really bad idea means that I can't possibly go any higher than that.