REV: Sucker Punch
Sucker Punched. We have been.
I knew this looked stupidly computer gamey, but I like to support interesting tough girl movies. It certainly looked pretty. And it certainly was pretty... disappointing.
As there isn't much of a plot, most reviews have focused on trying to analyse it's feminist values, or feminist failings. I'm here to show you how it's pointing out the failings of feminism.
(I paid the money to see it already, not much else I can do folks.)
The point of Sucker Punch is to show us just how pathetic our girls have become under the guise of sexy feminist liberation. Sexy is all right, but not at the expense of smarts, which is what we see constantly throughout the movie. Our main character, Baby Doll, is the most pathetic bimbo I've seen onscreen in a long time. Her mother dies, and she ends up killing her younger sister whilst she's trying to protect her from the evil step-father. So the step-father puts her in an insane asylum with plans to have her lobotomised.
I'd like to put it out here early... the lobotomy is a waste of a surgical procedure.
So Baby Doll plans to escape... oh no, that's right, she couldn't plan dinner if you handed her the 2 minute noodles. She is in an insane world, and for some reason this is always shown as a pseudo-brothel. This shows us that we've sexualised the world so much that everything may as well as be a brothel - that's what our "insane" girls think it is. So Baby Doll is asked to sexy-dance by the brothel madame.
Luckily for her, every time she dances she gets to hallucinate some smart olde dude who does know how to plan an escape. He tells her what she'll need and generally offers some quite sage-like advice. If it wasn't for him, she'd be hopeless. Actually, she is anyway. Not that she's on her own, all her girl sidekicks are equally daft, and likely to go along with anything that even seems like it might be vaguely related to a good idea. Sweet Pea is the only one who has half a spine, which sort of justifies her being the only survivor.
So the rest of the movie follows a pattern a little like this:
a) Girls need to collect special object to help with their escape (map, lighter, knife, key - seriously, apparently these girls are so dumb they couldn't figure this list out themselves, they need their old dude to tell them.)
b) In order to distract the brothel/asylum jail keepers, they use their ONLY special power - Baby Doll's sexy-dancing. This skill is totally dependant on technology, and without music, she can't dance/distract.
c) Whenever Baby Doll sexy dances, she hallucinates that she's fighting in some kind of funky war with her scantily clad galpals. Which is an interesting commentary on the way that sexy dancing has been recently positioned as a feminist activity, thus a part of the "war." The girls look great, they shoot imaginary computer gamey enemies and it's all nice in a fantasy kind of way. But it is a fantasy. Baby Doll isn't fighting a war. She's sexy dancing.
d) Baby Doll stops dancing (thus ending the war-hallucination) and the girls are back in the brothel/asylum with another item they need to make their escape.
The girls are tough in their fantasy war world. In the brothel world they're not, and four or five of these supposedly kick arse chicks can't stop one of their own being killed by a slow, fat cook. They also fail to stop one of their own being shot by the brothel king, Blue. These girls, while sexy, are so mind numbingly stupid that they can't save themselves. In fact, in the end, only one manages to escape. That's one survivor out of five. A success rate of 20%. Pretty pathetic.
Baby Doll gets her lobotomy, and in a nice touch, it's given to her by Dr "Don Draper" of Mad Men fame. This works, because we blame advertising for lobotomising our girls, for using "sex sells" to sell everything. All they're selling is souls. Interestingly, "Don" also plays the HighRoller, the brothel customer she would have been sold to - advertising both creates and consumes it's vapid bimbos. This is reiterated beautifully in the "play within a play" where Sweet Pea plays at being lobotomised for the pleasure of men... something she doesn't get.
The female psychiatrist/madame is also put in an interesting position at the end, when Dr Don shows her that she signed off on the lobotomy. It's unclear if she did, or if Blue forged her signature. What is clear though, is that if older women stand by or encourage girls to work on their bodies and sexy dancing at the expense of their minds, they may as well be signing off on brain destruction.
So as a far as I'm concerned, if there is a moral in the murky mess, it's something like:
"If your only special power is sexy-dancing, you're gonna get fucked."
Which brings me to define the title: Sucker Punch - a sudden unexpected defeat or setback.
HALF A STAR
(Based on the fact that halfway through I said "I think they've forgotten to make a movie.")
PS. I'm not a feminist, and never have been. I'm a humanist.
I knew this looked stupidly computer gamey, but I like to support interesting tough girl movies. It certainly looked pretty. And it certainly was pretty... disappointing.
As there isn't much of a plot, most reviews have focused on trying to analyse it's feminist values, or feminist failings. I'm here to show you how it's pointing out the failings of feminism.
(I paid the money to see it already, not much else I can do folks.)
The point of Sucker Punch is to show us just how pathetic our girls have become under the guise of sexy feminist liberation. Sexy is all right, but not at the expense of smarts, which is what we see constantly throughout the movie. Our main character, Baby Doll, is the most pathetic bimbo I've seen onscreen in a long time. Her mother dies, and she ends up killing her younger sister whilst she's trying to protect her from the evil step-father. So the step-father puts her in an insane asylum with plans to have her lobotomised.
I'd like to put it out here early... the lobotomy is a waste of a surgical procedure.
So Baby Doll plans to escape... oh no, that's right, she couldn't plan dinner if you handed her the 2 minute noodles. She is in an insane world, and for some reason this is always shown as a pseudo-brothel. This shows us that we've sexualised the world so much that everything may as well as be a brothel - that's what our "insane" girls think it is. So Baby Doll is asked to sexy-dance by the brothel madame.
Luckily for her, every time she dances she gets to hallucinate some smart olde dude who does know how to plan an escape. He tells her what she'll need and generally offers some quite sage-like advice. If it wasn't for him, she'd be hopeless. Actually, she is anyway. Not that she's on her own, all her girl sidekicks are equally daft, and likely to go along with anything that even seems like it might be vaguely related to a good idea. Sweet Pea is the only one who has half a spine, which sort of justifies her being the only survivor.
So the rest of the movie follows a pattern a little like this:
a) Girls need to collect special object to help with their escape (map, lighter, knife, key - seriously, apparently these girls are so dumb they couldn't figure this list out themselves, they need their old dude to tell them.)
b) In order to distract the brothel/asylum jail keepers, they use their ONLY special power - Baby Doll's sexy-dancing. This skill is totally dependant on technology, and without music, she can't dance/distract.
c) Whenever Baby Doll sexy dances, she hallucinates that she's fighting in some kind of funky war with her scantily clad galpals. Which is an interesting commentary on the way that sexy dancing has been recently positioned as a feminist activity, thus a part of the "war." The girls look great, they shoot imaginary computer gamey enemies and it's all nice in a fantasy kind of way. But it is a fantasy. Baby Doll isn't fighting a war. She's sexy dancing.
d) Baby Doll stops dancing (thus ending the war-hallucination) and the girls are back in the brothel/asylum with another item they need to make their escape.
The girls are tough in their fantasy war world. In the brothel world they're not, and four or five of these supposedly kick arse chicks can't stop one of their own being killed by a slow, fat cook. They also fail to stop one of their own being shot by the brothel king, Blue. These girls, while sexy, are so mind numbingly stupid that they can't save themselves. In fact, in the end, only one manages to escape. That's one survivor out of five. A success rate of 20%. Pretty pathetic.
Baby Doll gets her lobotomy, and in a nice touch, it's given to her by Dr "Don Draper" of Mad Men fame. This works, because we blame advertising for lobotomising our girls, for using "sex sells" to sell everything. All they're selling is souls. Interestingly, "Don" also plays the HighRoller, the brothel customer she would have been sold to - advertising both creates and consumes it's vapid bimbos. This is reiterated beautifully in the "play within a play" where Sweet Pea plays at being lobotomised for the pleasure of men... something she doesn't get.
The female psychiatrist/madame is also put in an interesting position at the end, when Dr Don shows her that she signed off on the lobotomy. It's unclear if she did, or if Blue forged her signature. What is clear though, is that if older women stand by or encourage girls to work on their bodies and sexy dancing at the expense of their minds, they may as well be signing off on brain destruction.
So as a far as I'm concerned, if there is a moral in the murky mess, it's something like:
"If your only special power is sexy-dancing, you're gonna get fucked."
Which brings me to define the title: Sucker Punch - a sudden unexpected defeat or setback.
HALF A STAR
(Based on the fact that halfway through I said "I think they've forgotten to make a movie.")
PS. I'm not a feminist, and never have been. I'm a humanist.