Sucker Punch stars Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens and Abbie Cornish, among other busty babes, and Jon "Can Do No Wrong Until Now" Hamm. Image courtesy of IMDB.
Warning: Some spoilers lay ahead.
As I’m finishing a novel to avoid applying for jobs, my dad randomly yells to me across the hall, “Sucker Punch is such a bad movie that it raises the bar for what counts as terrible.”
“What?”
“A review for Sucker Punch. I just e-mailed it to you.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Uh… Annalee Newlitz.”
“What does Roger Ebert say?”
“I don’t know, I’m reading, hush!”
This was the brief conversation that occurred between my dad and I earlier this afternoon. He graciously took off from work to accompany me and my sisters to see Sucker Punch this afternoon, after days of telling him much I wanted to see the film. And now he sits at his computer reading a glaring critique from io9, the first of many from not-so-impressed reviewers ranging from Entertainment Weekly to the Orlando Sentinel, calling the movie “numbingly dull” and “an unerotic unthrilling erotic thriller,” respectively. It has even been compared to the atrocity that was M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender. Ouch.
After the exchange, I quickly googled “Roger Ebert + Sucker Punch,” and stumbled upon Roeper’s review of the film titled, “Sucker Punch a confusing house-of-horrors story with busty women.” The scathing reviews don’t end there.
“You sure you don’t want to see Battle: Los Angeles?” my dad chimes later, repeating his sentiments from earlier this week. He also tried to wrangle me into watching Skyline last night, another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it alien invasion movie, which I oh-so-nicely declined. But today I stand my ground. “No! I want to see Sucker Punch!”
I’ve been excited to see this film since I saw teaser trailers months ago. Did I want to support Vanessa Hudgens, whose career was supposed to melt into non-existence after the end of the High School Musical franchise? Maybe. (There was no way in hell I was seeing that “thing” called Beastly.) Did I just want some mind-numbing entertainment that was promised in this Zack Snyder CGI- and fantasy-filled action flick? Hello? 300 was amaze-balls. And was I super excited to watch a film entirely dedicated to ass-kicking females, shooting heavy weaponry and slaying dragons? Duh!
So when I walked out of the theater this evening I was left only thinking of the dozens of critiques I skimmed earlier in the day. Why did I not listen? I had such high expectations for the film but I was left disappointed. The film turned out to be, echoing other reviews, confusing and boring.
