Story
Baby Doll (Emily Browning) and her younger sister have just lost their mother. They’re being abused by their angry stepfather (Gerard Plunkett), who has been left out of their mother’s will. Unable to put up with her stepfather’s abuse of her younger sister, Baby Doll tries to shoot him. When her younger sister is killed instead, the stepfather accuses Baby Doll of the crime and she’s committed to Lennox House, a psychiatric asylum. There Baby Doll overhears her stepfather bribing an orderly named Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) to arrange a lobotomy for her, to be done in five days.
At Lennox House, Dr Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) uses theatre techniques to treat her patients. Baby Doll makes friends with four girls – Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung). Baby Doll soon learns that she has a talent for dance. When she dances, she imagines herself into fantasy worlds where she’s in control and fighting zombies, dragons, robots and other evil beings. She incorporates her friends into these other realities along with The Wise Man (Scott Glenn), who gives her advice on reaching freedom.
Baby Doll tells the other girls about her escape plan. They begin working against great odds to collect what they need to make a bid for freedom.
Themes
Loss of a parent; sexual abuse; mental illness and mental institutions
Violence
Sucker Punch contains fantasy action violence, and real-world verbal and physical violence, including sexual abuse. For example:
Sexual references
This movie has some sexual references. For example:
- A man talks about helpless mental patients being ‘hot’.
- A young woman is shown a series of rooms in a hall and told that ‘these are the room where we take the clients’. Characters talk about ‘bringing in clients and making them feel special’. Characters talk about one young woman being saved for the ‘High Roller’ and about her not being a virgin.
- A man lusting after a young woman says, ‘Everyone gets to play with the toys but me’.
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
This movie has some use of substances. For example:
- The stepfather drinks and gets drunk.
- Baby Doll is injected with a sedative and quickly falls asleep.
- A man smokes cigars.
- A man sells drugs to make money.
- People drink in a bar.
Nudity and sexual activity
This movie has some nudity and sexual activity. For example:
- There are sexual assaults and attempted rapes, described above.
- Young women wear skimpy dance costumes with low-cut tops. They also wear short shorts, micro-mini skirts with slits up the side, bikini tops, tight-fitting shirts, corsets and tight-fitting, low-cut dresses.
- A young woman tells another woman to distract a man. Later she sits on his lap, nuzzling his neck and rubbing his chest as other women dance for an audience of men.
Product placement
None of concern
Coarse language
This movie has some coarse language, name-calling and put-downs.
Ideas to discuss with your children
Sucker Punch is a fantasy action adventure targeting an adolescent and younger adult audience. Its themes, violence and scary scenes make it unsuitable for younger teenagers.
The message this movie wants to send is that you can survive if you find inner strength and empower yourself.
Values in this movie that you could reinforce with your children include self-sacrifice, courage and friendship.
You could talk with your children about the conflicting messages in this movie. On one hand, the movie is saying that young women can be self-empowered superheroes. But the movie sends these self-empowered women into battle wearing sexual lingerie, push-up bras, micro-mini skirts, and tight-fitting dresses. The same women characters are also shown as sexual playthings and fair game for exploitation by men.