VALLEY PATRIOT TV REVIEW: Mr. Sunshine ABC Wednesdays 9:30 p.m.

 

By: Beth Daigle – April, 2012

I’m not going to lie I should not have enjoyed this movie. The acting is horrible, the story makes literally no sense, the ending makes even less sense. The entire soundtrack is butchered covers of classic songs. The pacing is more all over the place than a schizophrenic with ADHD. But for some reason, I absolutely loved this movie. I don’t even know how I’m going to review this if I have that type of mindset, but I’ll try my best. Sucker Punch is the newest movie by the biggest style over substance director since Michael Bay, Zack Snyder. And his style over substance shows here more than possibly any movie he’s ever made. The style is such a big part of the movie that it actually makes the plot make no sense at all.

If you don’t know about Zack Snyder, let me clue you in. His movies are famous for being ultra-stylistic in the sense that every single scene is completely computer generated. He’s also big on lens glare from the sun, slow motion, a lot of grey and brown, slow motion, overdone fight scenes, and slow motion. Yes, for some reason this guy LOVES slow motion and that hasn’t changed here. Also, multiple times they do the Zack Snyder trademark, which is starting a fight in slow motion, then speeding it up for 2 seconds, then slowing it back down, etc.

Okay maybe I should actually start talking about the plot. And like I said above, it makes little to no sense but I’ll try to simplify it. A girl is brought to a mental asylum, but she’s hallucinating so she sees it as a brothel where she and her friends are being held captive. So she needs to escape by getting five items; a knife, a map, fire, a key, and the last item is (DUN DUN DUN) a mystery. She gets all of these by dancing to distract people while her friends steal the items. But for some reason when she dances she imagines herself in another world (well actually four different worlds, one for every item.) And if she and her team fail in the imaginary world they fail in real life. I know, this plot makes no sense, I warned you.

Also, like I said above, the acting is so horrible with some actors it’s painful. But all of the girls have really good chemistry with each other, and the owner of the brothel is hilariously bad, to the point that he’s somehow good again. But with all of these downsides, this movie is saved x10 by its action. It’s so insane and beautiful it will make you want to buy the DVD just to watch those scenes again and again. Zack Snyder is truly at the top of his game cinematography wise, with some of the scenes being in a fantasy world fighting a dragon with a plane, and a WW1 trench warfare setting with giant flying robots. It’s as beautifully over the top as it sounds. If thinking about those things excites you, you absolutely have to see this movie.

I cannot possibly recommend this movie to anyone in particular, because it all depends on what you yourself look for in a movie. This will not emotionally move you, this will not challenge you, and this will not give you a moral lesson. All it will do is repeatedly punch you in the face with either how awesome/horrible it is. I almost never listen to movie tag lines, but this one is completely accurate. You will be completely unprepared for this movie.