Generation Hit-Girl
by Steve Dollar
One dark and stormy night, Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is menaced by her creepy stepfather, eager it seems to rid himself of competition for his late wife's inheritance. She fires a gun at him, hoping to protect her little sister from possible molestation, but the bullet ricochets and kills the poor thing, instead. The blonde, buxom, pigtailed offender is hauled away to the local asylum, a gated compound with a Hammer Studios/Titicut Follies vibe where Bad Daddy arranges with a corrupt staffer (Oliver Isaac) to have her lobotomized in five days. But suddenly! The crazy house turns into a lush bordello, where the working girls appear as captive slave labor, trained in exotic dancing by a Polish madame (Carla Gugino) with a moose-and-squirrel accent who plays fern-bar versions of classic rock hits on a reel-to-reel tape deck as they shake their groove thing. (Strangely, there is rarely any shaking or grooving on display). Everyone is kept under heel by Blue (also played by Isaac), a kind of Ricky Ricardo gangsta-pimp-pretty-boy with a cruel streak, thrilled because he's about to sell Baby Doll to a mysterious High Roller for a princely sum. 
When she dances, though, Baby Doll disappears even deeper inside her head, stepping into a video game reality where she meets a sensei?Scott Glenn! Nothing less than a David Carradine surrogate, the so-called Wise Man hands his disciple a samurai sword and some enigmatic advice, and turns her loose to battle a trio of giant killing machines before she comes back to the whorehouse. Now she knows how to escape, and she knows who she's taking with her: spunky Rocket (Jena Malone), seasoned Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), tough girl Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and, well, plug in whatever heroic attribute you like here because they're all interchangeable anyway Amber (Jamie Chung). More importantly, each character is more or less a white girl, a brown girl, a yellow girl and a crypto-lesbian, and they all look really rad in the sexy outfits they get to wear in avenging schoolgirl Baby Doll's endless and rampant imagination, unleashed any time she dances her mesmerizing routine (which, by the way, we never get to see). 
Thus the story progresses, a dream within a dream, as our inglourious Barbies vanquish demons, robot monsters, fire-breathing serpents, and the entire nation of Germany circa 1919, accompanied by an anachronistic pop soundtrack that blandly recycles the likes of "Search and Destroy" and "White Rabbit." Along the way, they're gathering the tools they need to escape Blue's grasp, bonding as sisters, and teaching themselves courage and self-determination. Snyder is keen on placing his heroines in a lineage that includes Alien's Ripley, The Terminator's Sarah Connor, Kick-Ass' Hit-Girl, Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider mode, Daryl Hannah's killer-thighed replicant from Blade Runner, or anything else you might think up. The code is a kind of feminized macho: a Hollywood gloss on the Japanese girl-gang mythos of the "Pinky Violence" genre. Or, as Glenn advises in one of his bumper-sticker asides: Don't ever write a check with your mouth that you can't cash with your ass. Holla! 
Yeah, okay. Sure. I wanted to be excited by this, because the concept is easy to like. But if I was the father of a pre-teen girl, I don't think I would take her to a movie whose characters (even in a fantasy) are the pawns of sexual slave traders. Even if, in the context of a fantasy within that fantasy, they turned out to be ball-busting acrobatic kung-fu action babes. But the lunchbox brigade was there, probably too IMAXed-out on the CGI fireworks and rushing on the sugar from their half-gallon cups of Coke to puzzle out the PG-13 subtleties of the deeper story. That said, Sucker Punch pushes every strip club archetype without ever really becoming raunchy, which makes the movie a shameful tease. James Gunn, whose forthcoming Super boasts Ellen Page as a foul-mouthed vigilante called Boltie, coined a name for it: PG Porn. Now that I have that public service announcement out of the way, there are certainly less enjoyable ways to burn a couple of hours in the afternoon. Sucker Punch is aptly named, yet it delivers on both sides of the equation. You will feel stupid after you watch it. And some part of you, where an unrepentant and devious 11-year-old kid resides, will be really thrilled that you did.
Posted by ahillis at March 26, 2011 8:37 AM
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/greencine/daily/~3/X4y8nESTSx0/008029.html
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