Sucker Punch PG-13

Review:

Sucker Punch is pretty much what it tells you it's going to be:  a high-impact, CGI-laced, weapons-blazing girl-power extravaganza.  Pretty much.  Kinda.  Well, there are definitely PARTS that are all that!  Sadly, the other parts are kind of slow, a little contrived, and a trifle self-aggrandizing. 

The story begins as the mother of two young girls passes away, leaving them with their Evil Step-Father.  After a tense situation between Baby Doll (played with wide eyed innocence by Emily Browning) and the E.S.F., the girl is sent to a lunatic asylum, where the ordely is paid off to get her lobotomized (oooh, all this AND lobotomies?  SWEET!)

Up until this part, the story is easily followed.  AFTER this part, you're not quite sure what, exactly, is going on.  Somewhere along the way Baby Doll falls into a world inside her own imagination that gives her a chance to find the keys to the release from the asylum for her and the other imprisoned girls.   In her imagination, the asylum is a brothel, and all the girls are "dancers" held under the mafia-tastic thumb of the orderly/pimp Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) and directed by the Madam/therapist Dr Gorski (Carla Gugino....who plays up her fabulous face and form with some seriously gorgeous costuming).

Long story short (too late),  Baby Doll is apparently a very talented dancer who can transport the viewer into insensibility, and herself and her fellow "dancers" into a magical world in which she is guided by a strange and wise man (Scott Glenn) to find the keys to their escape. 

FINALLY!!!  The entire reason I went to go and see this movie was for the Final Fantasy-esque battle scenes full of giant Samurai warriors, zombie Nazis, dragons, orcs, androids, and chicks with machine guns and a varying assortment of bladed weapons.  The battle scenes were full of imagination, fantastic music, great sci-fi special effects, and girls in short skirts working everything from choppers to a bunny-faced battle machine.  Everything you need to feel like you are inside your favorite video game!  Over-saturated colors, gravity-defying leaps into the air, and never-ending ammunition gave me the fun adrenaline rush that I had been waiting for.

Sadly, it was too little, too late.  The long, dry stretches between battle scenes, and the "wait, what is ACTUALLY happening here?" factor made it a fun movie, but not a great one.    The girls all did a great job with what they were given ( special props to Vanessa Hudgeons, who dirties down from her squeaky clean image pretty darn well as Blondie....thank heavens, now I don't have to think of HSM when I see her!).  They kicked butt and took names, and looked FAB doing it...but it just wasn't enough.

I give this movie 3 out of 5 stars....I was going to give it 2, but the battle scenes were really just down my alley (I'm a geek-in-disguise with a "girls rock!" fetish, what can I say?), so I popped in another star just because it made me happy!

***

For the Moms:

Language:  I have a feeling that they kept the language pretty light so that they could rack up the ratings points on content and violence.  Several "S-H" words mainly, but nothing horrifying.

Sexual content:  The entire movie's premise lies on the basic situation of a young girl being sexually abused by a guardian,  then put into a brothel.  there is no nudity, but the situations are really not good ones at all,  very sexually charged, with young girls taking the brunt of the sexuality hits.  Several scenes of attempted rape, though never actually "showing" anything, are disturbing enough in and of themselves.

Violence:  Loads and loads of it.  Both "real" and "imaginary".  The main violence is very video-game like, with the girls fighting imaginary beings.  However, there are portions of physical abuse and fighting between the characters themselves.

All in all, I would much rather this movie had made an R rating.  It never crosses the line on paper, but in spirit it does.  It's too much for kids to deal with, put into a video-game package. 

For the boys:  Boys will love the action and all of the amazing creatures created for the girls to fight.  Lots of blades, guns, bombs, zeppelins, and tricked-out helicoptors make it pretty exciting

For the girls:  Girls kicking butt.....in cute outfits, too!  What more could we want?

Again, I would recommend treating this as an R rating.  Don't take a 13 year old girl to it....it's just not the greatest subject matter for youngsters to deal with.

Topics of discussion:

How far is "too far" when fighting to save a loved one?  Is there a right and a wrong way to go about saving someone?

People can and do retreat into their own minds during crises.  Is this a strength or a weakness?

In the movie, Dr. Gorski tries to "help" the girls to deal with their fate, instead of helping them to escape.  How is she right or wrong?  If she tried to just help them escape, would she be helping them more or less, seeing as how she would most likely have been killed herself?

If we are witnesses to a situation where someone is taking advantage of others, what is the best way to handle it?  Who do we tell?  What do we say?