Where Do I Even Begin...

Rating: 2/10 (27 March 2011)

Let me start out by saying that 300 was great. Intense, graphic novel style that was beautiful and entertaining to watch. Zack Snyder's Watchmen was an amazing movie that really developed the characters while still retaining a great plot structure and fantastic visuals and directing style. Sucker Punch, however, fails to appeal to anything other than those looking for scantily clad teenage girls moping with the occasional linear CGI cut scene.
So why does Zack Synder fail so poorly? First of all I honestly think he cannot write his screenplays. Both 300 and Watchmen were not written by him. He also had a series of graphic novels to look at to help develop and hone in on the stylistic portions of the movie. Sucker Punch was written by yours truly, Zack Snyder. The story is ill conceived, predictable, and leaves nothing to the imagination.
The biggest problem of the entire movie is the soundtrack. The film totes remakes of 90s classics all set in a more melodramatic fashion. This is fine, but the soundtracks picked for each individual scene describes exactly how the central character at that point in time is "feeling." On top of this the scenes have numerous slow motion techniques and they also drop all in scene audio. All you can hear is the soundtrack playing. The end result is a movie that feels more like a long and boring music video. A hint for Zack Snyder; good movies do not pick random hits, they usually develop their own orchestral track. And when you have a $150 budget, I think find room to do that.
Besides this, the CGI scenes are all rather cliché and boring. Baby Doll must get item X which leads to CGI scene X. They are all linear and leave the viewer wondering when the scene will finally end. Worst of all the viewer realizes that they must watch a numbered total of these same exact linear scenes that all resemble video games or past great movies. In other words, the scenes basically stole from other popular fictional universes.
If you are not an avid fan of anime, or 12 years old, then do yourself a favor and take a pass on this movie.