Punchy action movie for suckers only

Most believe a sucker punch is something you don't see coming, a hard hit from nowhere.

This Sucker Punch, on the other hand, is something anyone can see coming from a mile away … and it’s the farthest thing from a hit.

Director Zack Snyder ventured a long way from his roots of making movies without extensive special effects budgets, but he should have stuck with his penchant for recycling material. His character-driven remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2004 was a fine example of Snyder at his lo-fi best.

After that he went hi-fi with the mostly green-screened sword and sandals epic 300. He hasn't looked back since, with Watchmen two years ago and now this. The plot of Sucker Punch is confusing, but it looks like a hodgepodge of many other better films. Like Frankenstein's monster wasn't a perfect specimen of humanity just because it was made with parts from other people, this movie didn't improve just by dint of everything else that it reminds us of. Here, the sum is lesser than the parts.

In Sucker Punch, 20-year-old Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is orphaned after her mother dies. Her evil stepfather kills her sister but pins the blame on her, sending the girl to an institute for the mentally insane to be lobotomized so he can cash in on the dead woman's inheritance.

Inside the facility, she befriends four other inmates: Rocket (Jena Malone), her older sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Amber (Jamie Chung) and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens). While hallucinating, Baby Doll hatches a plan to escape and gets the others to tag along.

There are many problems with this film, not the least of which is the fact these young women spend practically the entire film in short skirts and heavy makeup. What looked like some kind of empowering epic about escaping the tyranny of men turned into a show that made me feel like a leering pervert just by watching.

Baby Doll's eyelashes are so long they could have been used as weapons. It's surprising they weren't considering how the film is packed with so many other implements of violent death and destruction. Her plan takes all five heroines to strange fantasy worlds where intense battles must occur in order to find specific objects to aid in their escape, like some kind of scavenger hunt through dark fantasies. They go to a medieval castle to fight strange orc-like goblins and dragons, all while keeping their hair perfect. Wearing bustiers and fishnet stockings, they fight robot soldiers during the Nazi blitz on London.

Sucker Punch clearly takes a lot of cues from other better works from the cinematic compendium. The first five or 10 minutes are in washed out hues — practically black and white — before the Technicolor comes in. Looks like The Wizard of Oz.

There's a hip soundtrack with a lot of heavily produced cover songs. Sounds like Moulin Rouge. Then there's the ragtag team of smart and talented young women who show they can do anything the bad guys can do except better. Charlie's Angels anyone?

It all boils down to audiences expecting another 300, a movie so mind-blowing with its crazy visuals that I watched it twice on opening weekend. Maybe that was the real sucker punch: this movie should have been fun but it's practically unwatchable.