What a let-down....

Rating: 3/10 (1 April 2011)

I'd been following the development of Sucker Punch for some time and was genuinely excited to be attending the preview screening. Sexy girls fighting Samurai Demons, Steam-Powered Clock-Work Nazi Zombies, Orc's & Dragons - what's not to like? Quite a lot, as I found out.
The characters appear out of thin air with little or no background story so straight away you don't know them and have no reason to care. They then become embroiled in fantasy battles against warriors, zombies, orcs and robots. Once again, you don't even know the enemy so there's no reason to root for one group over another, no reason to care who lives or dies. Zero emotional investment.
Add to this a convoluted plot, plenty of plagiarism with scenes & characters lifted directly out of other movies (I'm not sure if this was genuine or intended to be humorous but either way it didn't work) and you're left with one seriously unoriginal, boring movie.
The heavy CGI is passable but completely overused (Does a shot of a bus leaving a bus terminal really have to be CG'd?) and although slickly directed and highly stylized, no amount of slow motion shots of semi-naked sex-kittens can mask the story's shortcomings.
I compared the experience of watching this movie to watching a friend play a video game for 2 hours. He's having a great time, but me, I'm just sitting there doing nothing, bored.
The one sterling aspect of this movie was the sound editing and the soundtrack, top marks for this.
Here's hoping the new Superman movie has a great writer on board and some tough producers.