Movie review: Sucker Punch

If you're the sort of moviegoer whose primary criteria for judging a film is how many scantily clad beautiful women it can assemble, then Zack Snyder's "Sucker Punch" is the picture for you.

Sure, there are plenty of people like that out there, which is the likely reason why this movie was made. But for the rest of you, be aware: the movie's ability to collect gorgeous actresses is its one and only defensible quality.

What an abysmal, pointless film, with just about nothing to say and no good way of saying it. Even though it's an original story, "Sucker Punch" feels like it must've been adapted from a mediocre graphic novel. I bet I could watch it five times and still have no idea what exactly the movie is about.

Snyder is best known as the director of "Dawn of the Dead," "300," and "Watchmen"; "300" was the only one I really liked and even that had major problems. Based on "Sucker Punch," and Snyder's faithful-to-a-fault "Watchmen" adaptation, I can't say I have especially high hopes for his "Superman" movie next year.

Much like "Inception," or the final season of "Lost," "Sucker Punch" takes place on three separate planes of reality, which feature all the same actors and frequently bleed into each other. The difference is, "Inception" never had any trouble making sense or keeping its story straight, and while "Lost"'s ending was unsatisfying to most, at least it attempted to offer an explanation.

The film begins on Level 1, with an elaborate prologue that has virtually zero to do with the rest of the movie. Heroine Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is taken by her abusive stepfather to a mental hospital where she's threatened with a lobotomy.

In Level 2, Baby Doll is imprisoned in a cabaret/brothel with a group of other hot dancers (including Abbie Cornish, Vanessa Hudgens, Jena Malone, and Jamie Chung.)

And in Level 3, all the same women comprise an elite commando unit in a futuristic hellscape in which they battle robots, Orc-like creatures, and vampires who may be Nazis.

There's little point to any of this, presumably, except for Snyder's interest in ripping off all his favorite genres. Level 1 resembles a 1950s mental hospital horror film, while Level 2 is a "Black Swan" - like psychological thriller, complete with not-so-subtle lesbian overtones. And Level 3 steals whole scenes from a wide variety of movies, from "Kill Bill" to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy to "I, Robot."

The problem is that none of it fits together, at all. And none of it is nearly as fun as it sounds.

"Sucker Punch" has two huge failures above all others. First, the story makes no sense and there's nothing at stake. How, for instance, are we supposed to care about Level 3's elaborate action sequences, when we don't know how they relate to the movie's reality? Level 2 is the only part that tells anything resembling a story, and the movie keeps parachuting out of it.

The other huge hole in "Sucker Punch" is the character of Baby Doll. Browning, at least how she's photographed here, resembles Paris Hilton and has the same vacant, blank, Paris-like look on her face for the entire movie. Nevermind trying to avoid a lobotomy; she looks like she already had one. It's another instance in which a movie tells us over and over again how awesome a character is and we're shown absolutely nothing that backs it up.

Cornish, who I've enjoyed in a lot of movies, fares better, although her resemblance to fellow Australian Nicole Kidman is so pronounced at times that it's a distraction.

Meanwhile, Scott Glenn has a memorable role in the battle scenes as an old codger who spouts goofy aphorisms like "don't cash checks with your mouth that your ass can't cash," which would be an awesome catchphrase if it made any sense at all. And Jon "Don Draper" Hamm shows up for two minutes and has about four lines; why a talent like Hamm was needed for such a nothing role remains a mystery.

There's one more truly atrocious aspect to the movie - the music, which is absolutely abominable from start to finish.

Whether we're talking about horrible rap mashups or terrible covers - by the cast itself, I gather - of Beatles and Jefferson Airplane classics, the music is terrible enough to make bad scenes worse.

"Sucker Punch" ends not with answers but rather with a series of questions: "Who's story is it...? "Who's to say...?" I was left with another question:  "Who cares?"