Very flawed, but very fun (for the right audience).

Rating: 7/10 (1 April 2011)

"You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!"
Sucker Punch is a cheesecake action movie that offers a crazy premise, lots of hot girls, and non-stop video game/anime inspired explosions and fights. If you expect anything more than that from the movie, you will be greatly disappointed. This is a niche film if I've ever seen one. It's simultaneously silly, dark, and very grim. All sex appeal and slow-motion back flips. Style over substance taken to a new peak. And a lot of people will most assuredly hate it.
Will this appeal to you? Picture watching a hot girl having a sword fight with giant Gatling gun-wielding demon samurai (in slow motion and with lots of explosions and collapsing buildings) one minute, and then watching five hot girls fight a WWI-inspired battle against Nazi Zombies the next minute. With giant mechs. And then there are dragons. And orcs. And nothing but the flimsiest excuse for why these things are happening. And each girl dresses like a burlesque dancer or call girl at all times. And there's non-stop violence involving said scantily-clad girls. Sucker Punch is two hours of exactly all those things.
Oh, and there are three separate realities that the characters exist in.
I won't even bother trying to explain the story, because it's just an insane excuse to see half-naked women do things and kill stuff in slow motion. Don't worry about the plot, it will just distract you from focusing on Baby Doll (Emily Browning) shooting down a Zeppelin with a machine gun, while wearing a sailor outfit/Japanese school girl uniform. Or keep you from focusing on Rocket (Jena Malone) while she's blowing off a robot's head with a sawed-off shotgun and trying to stop a bomb on a speeding train from blowing up a city. If you're going to watch this movie, you'll get the best experience by keeping your attention solely on what's happening right in front of you at any given moment, and forgetting about what's happened before or what the overall story is supposed to be, and how any of this is supposed to fit into it. Just go with it.
Sucker Punch is nonsensical, silly, and lots of people who see it will think it's purely exploitative, empty, action-driven trash. That's a fair assessment. I can't fault them for that opinion. Even a fan of the movie (which I am, in case you can't tell by now) has to admit that at it's very best, Sucker Punch is an absurd, sleazy male fantasy with only the most shallow visual appeal and thrills to recommend it.
I still found it very entertaining, though. Flaws and all, this was ultimately a fun movie (for me). For the right audience, Sucker Punch is a uniquely exhilarating genre flick that combines babes, action, and a ton of different influences in a way that doesn't happen very often.
Just consider my review carefully before you watch something that could possibly be a massive waste of your time. As for me, I'm looking forward to a blu-ray release that hopefully restores the footage that was cut from the theatrical version. This is a crazy ride, but I'm totally prepared to take it again.