Pretty girls fill graves in Zack Snyder's crassly gift-wrapped megapresent to the demographic that's kept him employed through five features. While it's easy to criticize the bombastic director (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen) for shamelessly pandering to his niche — this is the first, and last, time we'll get to enjoy watching Abbie Cornish wield an assault rifle while wearing hot pants and heels — there are snack-size servings of pop-art value worth digesting here.

Framed for the murder of her sister by her evil stepfather (men are such jerks!), the meek Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is shipped off to a mental asylum operated by scumbag hustler Blue (Oscar Isaac), who runs the joint as a combo cabaret/whorehouse, pimping out his comely prisoners (Cornish, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone) as featured performers for men who can pay. The first time she's forced to dance by pouty psychoanalysist/choreographer/den mother (yes!) Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino), Baby Doll’s mind flutters off into a fanciful cut scene, where a mysterious wise man (Scott "No, I'm Not a Carradine" Glenn) explains how to flee her hellish existence. Each time Baby Doll shimmies, she's tossed into a new otaku-friendly challenge, slaying samurai or dragons or steam-powered Nazi zombie robots (?); and each time she gets down, the boys are transfixed, allowing her girls to enact their oddly simplistic escape plan.

While Snyder would probably like to spin Baby Doll's sexual sovereignty as a form of female empowerment, it’s really nothing more than a tactic to get the overstimulated fanboys in the audience keyed up for the next high-gloss nerdgasm, and all those peaks and valleys beget a non-event of an ending. It's best to take in Sucker Punch as one takes in a can of Mountain Dew: as quickly and thoughtlessly as possible.