Sucker Punch | No Strings Attached | My Soul to Take

Rarely does a title so accurately describe the experience of watching a movie; Zack Snyder´s Sucker Punch is just that. It´s an unbearable exercise in tedium that blindsides the audience, a pandering ComiCon fanboy disaster; story, theme, continuity, coherency, and logic are gleefully tossed aside, all casualties of the oppressive, overbearing style. It´s bold, no doubt; you can make sense of it, yes, and even foster a deep admiration and appreciation for Snyder´s strange new work. But why bother? Sucker Punch is pure torture to sit through.

In a fitfully effective opening sequence – perhaps the only one in the film, told without dialogue or sound effects, just Emily Browning´s cover of the Eurythmics´ Sweet Dreams – bleach-blonde, pigtailed Baby Doll (Browning) accidentally shoots her sister while trying to defend her from an evil stepfather, who wants the money their recently-deceased mother willed to them; Dad has Baby Doll institutionalized, and bribes one of the orderlies to arrange a lobotomy, which will be carried out in five days time.

What we experience, effectively, are metaphors piled on top of metaphors: the girls need to obtain a map to escape the mental institution, they plan this in the nightclub fantasy sequence, and carry out the mission of obtaining the map on the fantasy warfront. Sitting in the audience, we have no way of interacting with these scenes: there´s a level of disconnect between each fantasy world, so while watching the first level of reality might have had some intrinsic tension or suspense, there is none by the time we get to the third. It´s Inception gone all horribly wrong.

Subplots all trump the trite premise, including an actual romance, which exists only in the background of some scenes, between best friend characters played by Greta Gerwig and Jake Johnson; I cared more about them than the leads. Also: Emma, as a doctor in training, making googly eyes at Dr. Metzner (Cary Elwes – fourth billed but barely in the film, likely a subplot casualty); Alex´s celebrity father (Kevin Kline), who is dating his ex-girlfriend (Ophelia Lovibond); and Alex´s day job working on the set of a High School Musical-like production, where a nice girl (Lake Bell) is interested in him.

Better than anything else here is an actual examination of the Emma character, who persists with the casual sex thing because she´s afraid of true intimacy; but while her story is hinted at throughout, it gets only a cursory glance and a brief, packaged explanation at the end. Surely, that´s what drew Portman to the project – there´s nothing else here to merit her interest. Coming right on the back of her Oscar win for Black Swan, this is the first true rom-com on her resume, and it couldn´t be more generic. On the flip side is Kutcher, who we expect to see in these films; playing a mostly likable character without any real problems, he´s especially bland.

I´ve never been a fan of Craven, who hit it big with A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, two of the most successful horror franchises out there; the sketchy dream logic of Elm Street never worked for me, and Scream felt too pretentious to work on its intended level. The rest of his filmography is littered with films of comparable quality to My Soul to Take, many worse (his best? 1977´s The Hills Have Eyes). Up next: Scream 4, opening in local cinemas in two weeks. Prediction: more of the same.