Movies have an endless capacity to shed light on our real-life problems.

I know whenever I'm about to engage in some intense sexy dancing that may well save my life, what really helps me get in the mood is to envision myself chopping up legions of orcs with a samurai sword.

Or say I'm delivering a speech on nonviolence to the UN (I moonlight as an international diplomat. We all have to do our part). I'm not going to stand up on that stage and think about words and stuff, am I? Not when I've found I'm far more effective at giving speeches when I pretend I'm a merry little tugboat delivering candy to the beleaguered elves of Locklilly Forest.

-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.

Yes, sure, these metaphors are going to strike some people as a little strained. Well, I'm not the only one who uses them. So if you've got a problem with that, you might also want to stay away from the magical failure that is Sucker Punch.

When Emily Browning is attacked by her jealous stepfather Gerard Plunkett, she accidentally shoots her little sister in the ensuing struggle. Plunkett quickly institutionalizes her and arranges to have her lobotomized.

There seems to be no escape--except into the realm of fantasy. There, she meets master warrior Scott Glenn, who sends her on a quest for five items that may be the key to her salvation.

That description's fudging it a little. That actually sounds halfway coherent, right? Which is inaccurate. Which means I'm doing a bad job. Which means...my god...another trip to the Editor's Dungeon.

Well, I've lost a little blood, but at least I can still type with eight fingers. So anyway, a better description might be "A pretty girl imagines herself in a strange prison/burlesque/whorehouse, where from there she further imagines herself to be fighting giant mechanical samurai and fire-breathing dragons for some reason. Actually, for the reason that writer/director Zack Snyder loves sword fights." Alternately, you could sum it up with "The Pussycat Dolls meet Inception, and also everyone's brain has been stepped on a few times."

Let's get a few things out of the way: Sucker Punch looks great. Of course it does. Snyder, the guy behind 300 and Watchmen, could make the puddle behind an outhouse look like the Fountain of Youth. His fight scenes--and there are a lot of them--are kinetic, vibrant, and fun.

And basically, there's no reason for them to exist.

Sucker Punch is a contrivance. Along with co-writer Steve Shibuya, Snyder has shoehorned his battles in via the thinnest of metaphors. Honestly, it doesn't even make sense as a metaphor: Browning dances very well for her burlesque show captors, you see, but when she's dancing, she's really thinking about mowing down clockwork Germans in alternate-World War I. You know, just like every master ballerina.

Amidst all this dreaming, Sucker Punch tries to pull a fast one with its ending, blurring the lines between what's real and what's imaginary in a way that will cause you to frown so hard your lower lip will end up somewhere over your forehead. Also, since it totally fails to set up its emotional haymaker, the big reveal swings and misses so hard the resulting wind could power a small city.

It's kind of an amazing movie, honestly, one with a script that seems hacked out of three different movies and Frankensteined together with scenes from a half dozen other sci-fi/fantasy flicks. Does it make any sense? Not a damn bit. But don't take that to mean I didn't have a good time.

Grade: D+

* Contact Ed Robertson at edwrobertson@gmail.com. His fiction is available on Kindle through Amazon.