Here's what bothers me about this
This movie is suppose to be the fantasy of a young girl, but it really SEEMS like a very MALE fantasy. I'm not saying that I have anything against male fantasies since I'm male. And I'm certainly not going to say this movie doesn't have its share of female fans. But there IS a difference between male fantasies and females fantasies. And you don't need to "understand women" to understand that.
Take the opening scenes, the first "layer". I hate to admit it, but I didn't really identify with Baby Doll, but actually more with the stepfather who was sexually molesting her! That's not because I'm just a male creep, but because even THERE she is presented more as a male fantasy figure--a defenseless, vulnerable but sexy young girl to feed all of your BDSM fantasies. OK, maybe that's me, but Emily Browning played a similar role in "Sleeping Beauty", but she seems much more like a REAL person in that. Even though she is butt-naked and drugged during half that movie, I could relate and empathize with her character a lot more than I could Baby Doll in this one.
It gets worse in the second layer. Like Browning, Abby Cornish and Jenna Malone are good actresses, but they are more "eye candy" than relatable human beings in this movie. They're fantasies of Baby Doll supposedly, but they're strangely MALE fantasies. Jamie Chung is pretty, but also pretty VACANT. And Vanessa Hudgens is like a sex android whose sole function is to produce raging boners (a function which she does perform well). If this wasn't regrettably rated PG-13, Baby Doll could have "fantasized" a five-way lesbian scene here.
The third level is PURE male fantasy, and really the most IMMATURE male fantasy. It's like the fantasy of virginal teen boys who are shifting their interest from video games to an interest in sexy, barely clad girls, but they really know NOTHING about these girls, so they kind of mash the childish and adult fantasies together. The most memorable image here, for instance, is when a CGI explosion sends Hudgens barely-clad (and very nice) butt flying right into the camera.
I'm not saying this movie is bad, but it is at heart an intelligent yet adolescent MALE fantasy. I just don't find that all that interesting anymore. I actually prefer genuine female fantasies these days because women (even young women) are still mysterious to me while adolescent boys are been-there-done-that boring.
"Let be be finale of seem/ The only emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream"