Visual stunner that lacks a proper plot line (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Visual stunner that lacks a proper plot line

9:56am Tuesday 9th August 2011 in DVD reviews By Damon Smith

Sucker Punch (Cert 12, 128 mins, Warner Home Video). Starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Oscar Isaac, Carla Gugino, Scott Glenn, Gerard Plunkett **

Babydoll (Browning) is institutionalised at Lennox House For The Mentally Insane by her cruel stepfather (Plunkett). Abandoned to the mercy of head orderly Blue (Isaac) and psychiatrist Dr Vera Gorski (Gugino), Babydoll seeks refuge in her dreams. She imagines the facility as a brothel, where Madam Gorski trains the girls to dance for gentlemen callers. Fellow inmates Sweet Pea (Cornish), Rocket (Malone), Blondie (Hudgens) and Amber (Chung) are slowly drawn into Babydoll’s alternate universe, where they hatch a daring escape plan overseen by a mysterious wise man (Glenn), who advises Babydoll to seek out five treasures that will help the girls become mistresses of their destiny. Sucker Punch is a visually arresting action adventure, which mashes together influences and motifs from anime, video games and popular culture. Director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) combines dazzling computer-generated visuals with a pounding rock soundtrack. He and co-writer Steve Shibuya gorge our senses with visions of fire-breathing dragons, samurais and zombie soldiers, but they also starve our brains with a flimsy, nonsensical tale of reality versus fantasy. Characterisation and narrative coherence are completely redundant, promoting a message of female empowerment – so long as the heroines achieve their freedom in corsets, basques and panties.

Your Highness (Extended Edition) (Cert 15, 101 mins, Entertainment One UK). Starring Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux, Charles Dance, Damian Lewis, Toby Jones *

Prince Thadeous (McBride) has always laboured in the shadow of his handsome and gallant brother, Prince Fabious (Franco), who is the favourite of their father (Dance) and the maidens of the realm. When Fabious’s bride, beautiful Belladonna (Deschanel), is kidnapped by dastardly sorcerer Leezar (Theroux) he gives chase with loyal lieges Boremont (Lewis) and Julie (Jones), plus Thadeous begrudgingly in tow. The brothers encounter weird and wonderful characters along the way, including sexy warrior Isabel (Portman), who is unfathomably attracted to overweight and clumsy Thadeous. Your Highness is a vulgar, puerile and relentlessly potty-mouthed tale of good versus evil. McBride and Franco don’t generate any on-screen chemistry to convince us they are brothers. A horse-and-carriage chase is the only sequence of any note for director David Gordon Green, who fails miserably to repeat the success of Pineapple Express.