Tags : 9, 9 movie, 9 movie review
Movie Review: 9 ( ** )
A stitch in time may save nine, but adding time can’t save 9.
Explanation: the animated science fiction flick, 9, was an 11-minute silent short, director Shane Acker’s thesis film for UCLA’s graduate animation department.
Now 9 is a 79-minute feature film. It’s also a further demonstration that not all effective short subjects can be stretched into effective features.
9 (not to be confused with the musical, Nine, which opens later this year, or the currently-playing science fiction thriller, District 9) is an animated sci-fi adventure that was originally an Academy Award nominee in 2005 for Best Animated Short.
It’s been expanded and brought to the screen by its creator (and sponsored by producer Tim Burton), a post-apocalyptic nightmare about a future world that lies in ruins following a war waged between humans and machines in which the humans were annihilated and the world was left in ruin. Industrial imagery abounds, so perhaps the time frame is World War I or II.
The characters we come to know (sort of) as we peruse the desolate landscape are stitched-together, not-quite-human, goggle-eyed rag dolls — nine of them, each identified by the single-digit number on its back and each younger and more evolved than its predecessor. They’ve been created by a human scientist rebelling against a dictatorial leader and they must do battle with imposing, to say nothing of enormous, mechanical monsters.
The title character, #9, is voiced by Elijah Wood, and he’s joined by, among others, the voices of Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover, John C. Reilly, and Martin Landau. Accomplished thesps all, but none of them manages to engage us to the point that we feel emotionally invested.
The film’s most compelling and successful feature is director Acker’s masterful manipulation of perspective, expecially in the early going. He has imagined and designed a universe that’s nothing if not visually striking.
But he also wrote the lackluster story that Pamela Pettler (who scripted animated works Corpse Bride, for Tim Burton, and Monster House) has turned into a muddy screenplay, which consists of a slender plot and a series of set pieces that don’t exactly flow into one another. We are led to believe that there will be secrets revealed and mysteries solved, neither of which ever happens.
The result is a stylish film of precious little dramatic interest. There’s plenty of action for the youngsters, but little context for anyone of age looking for it. As for layered characterization, it’s nowhere to be found, which is perhaps why the dialogue — which there was none of in the original short — is so generic and flat.
When the film concludes, in essence stopping instead of ending, the experience seems disappointingly incomplete, as if the director and screenwriter forgot that a feature-length narrative was actually necessary.
More is less in this longer animated version of 9, an impressive visual accomplishment that’s too dark and intense for the little ones and too undeveloped and unsatisfying for us ex-little ones.
Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN
79 minutes
In theaters September 9, 2009
Rating: PG-13, Animated adventure
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