Sucker Punch

You shouldn’t listen to experts. In fact you should ignore pretty much any opinions anyone has on something so purely subjective as art or entertainment; even me (especially me). I saw the trailer for “Sucker Punch” many months ago. It had hot girls, explosions, and lots of CGI. And I thought to myself, “Well, that looks awesome.” And then it came out and I read a lot of the reviews. It did not do well and that kept me from seeing it for weeks. Finally a weekend came when I had absolutely nothing else to do and I thought, “Fuck it, it can’t be that bad.” And guess what: it wasn’t! I think it’s just another victim of Expectation Theory. So I’ll take the hit this time and be the contrarian.

“Sucker Punch” is a pure spectacle. There is a lot to look at in this movie and not a lot else, which is why I think it got such poor reviews. But honestly, what were people expecting, Shakespeare? It’s about a young girl sent to an insane asylum and how she tries to escape. It starts with these kind of music video montages which are beautiful but really lack the characterization that would have helped the audience had there been some dialogue. This is the films main problem. The characters are not well defined at all. It also doesn’t help that the acting isn’t great either. But the plot and the characters and the story are negligible. The whole point of the film is that it is a grand spectacle for your eye, and to that end it is brilliant. The story is just a kind of loose structure in which these big action/effects set pieces can exist. Those sequences are crazy. And not for nothing but the girls in the movie are super hot, which is a bonus if you’re into that sort of thing. I understand that the film had an R-rated version, and I suspect that had they not cut it down it would have been better. As I walked out of the theater I heard other people register their dissatisfaction with the ending. This might be another reason people didn’t like it. But I didn’t mind the ending, as I wasn’t invested in the story or the characters to begin with. I did however greatly appreciate the cameo by Jon Hamm, because he is awesome and should be in every movie.

There is one movie I hate more than any other that I have ever seen in my entire life. That film is “Moulin Rouge.” I have been forced to watch it many times and I have a special kind of contempt for it. Words cannot express how terrible it is. That film is similarly a spectacle. It also has similar anachronistic elements. The difference is that “Moulin Rouge” was a musical, and “Sucker Punch” is an action movie. “Moulin Rouge” was nominated for Oscars, while this movie will most likely only be appreciated by 13 year old boys. That is bullshit and it’s not fair to the filmmakers who made this movie. This is a way better film than “Moulin Rouge” will ever be. It’s “Speed Racer” all over again. I absolutely love that film, but I was probably the only one in the whole world who did. That film more than any other defines what Hollywood filmmaking was like in the last decade. That film is also an action spectacle and it’s just as good. I honestly don’t understand what people expected, but I expected this movie to be awesome and it delivered. And you know something else, I admire that they had the balls to try and do something original, instead of just another remake or reboot or re-piece of shit. It’s very rare these days that I see a movie without source material, and for that alone they deserve some credit.