Love conquers all.

Rating: Null/10 (29 July 2011)

Many will write off this movie as too strange with form over substance, a great visual display that means nothing. It isn't as simple as that. I enjoyed it, for the something different that it is.
As the movie begins we see a will, where a now dead mother gave her two daughters to her husband, their stepfather. A mean stepfather. While the older daughter is trying to protect them, she accidentally shoots her younger sister. This puts her into a hospital for the insane. But she isn't insane.
The hospital is not your usual hospital, instead it is run to train the attractive girls to dance and entertain clients, to give them pleasure.
Emily Browning is the stepdaughter, and in the hospital she is called Baby Doll. When she is asked to dance, the only way she can do it is to retreat into a fantasy world, one where she can fight and slay any assortment of robots, monsters, or fire-breathing dragons.
Although we never see what is actually going on during these escapes into fantasy, it apparently results in her dancing performances unlike any they have seen before. She soon is a big hit. But Baby Doll wants to escape the hospital, and during her fantasy Scott Glenn as the Wise Man tells her what she needs to get ... a map, fire, a knife, and a key. Plus one other that she will discover for herself.
Her cohorts, both in the fantasy scenes and for the escape attempt are Abbie Cornish as Sweet Pea, Jena Malone as Rocket, Vanessa Hudgens as Blondie, and Jamie Chung as Amber .
The lady who takes these showgirls under her wing is Carla Gugino as Dr. Vera Gorski. While Oscar Isaac is Blue Jones, the ruthless operator of the whole thing.
SPOILERS: Both Rocket and Blondie die at the hands of Blue Jones, but Baby Doll and Sweet Pea make it outside the building. Still, they must get by a group of men. Baby Doll discovers what the last item was, it was for her to sacrifice herself to allow Sweet Pea to make it out, and eventually travel to a better life. Outside, she gets on a bus, the driver is The Wise Man. Reality and fantasy fusing into one.