Feeble Fantasy

CAST: Emily Browning,Abbie Cornish,Jena Malone,Vanessa Hudgens,Jamie Chung,Carla Gugino,Scott Glenn

Rating: *1/2

Never write a cheque with your mouth that you can’t encash with your ass” — that’s the Wiseman in Sucker Punch (played by Glenn). Just consider the possibilities of that advice. Then,just consider that he doesn’t come close to even capturing the absurdity of all that’s Sucker Punch.

It’s the kind of film where a girl put into an “Institution for the Mentally Insane (as opposed to the other kind)” is set into a chair for lobotomy,which suddenly transforms into a fairly lavish prostitution club. When the aforesaid “Babydoll” (Browning) closes her eyes,she gets transported into a world as seen by director Snyder (grainy and graphic-novel-like,where villains come in all shapes). And when she fights the creatures,swooping up,skidding down,bending at gravity-defying angles,stopping bullets with swords,it is somehow seen as though she is doing some luscious dance number.

Of course,given the difficulties of actually portraying Browning’s gyrations as grace,even Snyder chickens. So all we see is Browning in corset and the tiniest of briefs closing her eyes in a brothel,and opening them in a world where she is wearing similarly tiny clothes but in black leather with high heels. Her hair remains unchanged — in two ponytails lest you forget that behind all that greasepaint is a girl barely into her teens.

And then you see it all too clearly — how many hits Sucker Punch hopes to make,dressing up girls as sex symbols and hard-hitting kick-asses.

Wiseman suddenly sounds all too prescient when he tells Babydoll and her bunch of four girl buddies — Rocket (Malone),Sweet Pea (Cornish),Blondie (Hudgens) and Amber (Chung): “When you don’t stand for something,you fall for anything.” Yes,anything.