Focus Features
9 in not a typical Hollywood animated movie. Based on a college thesis short film, 9 is a tale of survival, featuring a small group of what looks like burlap sack puppets and mysterious beasts that prey on them.
Begin spoiler-free transmission: Featuring dark and creepy action set pieces, a dour (albeit curious) atmosphere and a somewhat new take on the post apocalyptic survival movie, 9 is definitely not for the little kids (more on this later). The animation is often beautiful (despite the grungy settings) and combined with strong direction, a good story and great voice acting, makes for an interesting movie. While the big ideas are nothing new, the little twists and tweaks help to keep things fresh. Based on this, we should all look forward to whatever director Shane Acker has next. End spoiler-free transmission.
The movie starts with the world in ruins, and 9 (Elijah Wood, Back to the Future Part II) is just waking up for the first time. He soon finds 2 (Martin Landau, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!), another burlap sack type of puppet, who then protects 9 from The Beast, an incredibly creepy robot canine of some sort who ends up taking 2 away. 9 then meets 5 (John C. Reilly, Hard Eight), and together they set off to save 2, despite being told to stay put by sack puppet leader 1 (Christopher Plummer, Lock Up Your Daughters!). We eventually meet the rest of this numbered gang, including touched in the head 6 (Crispin Glover, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter). And no, 6 never appears to fear 7 (Jennifer Connelly, Requiem For a Dream), and 7 never looks at 9 with hungry eyes. So when 9 and 5 save 2, with the help of 7 (you following along so far?), they manage to awaken some sort of mechanical monster.
Turns out that this monster was a human invention, created by The Scientist, who built a large computer brain for the purposes of advancement and creation. But the Brain falls into the hands of The Dictator and it becomes weaponized. Now known simply as The Machine, it builds other machines to assist the humans with their wars. And of course, the machines turn against the humans (this is all shown with black & white newsreel type of images, including direct homages to Empire Strikes Back and War of the Worlds), and these machines fight dirty by releasing a green gas that kills everything. After the war is over and the worlds falls into silence is when 9 awakens, and he finds himself in the middle of the final battle between man and machine.
This is set up by The Scientist, who created the Brain using his own intellect and later realized that he created a seriously flawed machine because it had no soul. In order to save humanity, he created the nine little puppets and put pieces of his soul into each of them. So The Machine wants these puppets so he can take their souls, and the guys obviously want to destroy The Machine. Basically it comes down to pure intellect vs. what makes humans human. The Machine can have all the smarts in the world (which it uses to make fantastically scary looking scavengers to hunt our numerical heroes down), but without compassion or empathy, just simply remains a machine, carrying out its own program without a thought as to the consequences.
And it is because of themes like this and the dark presentation that definitely makes this a movie for teenagers and older. This is not Aladdin, folks, or Madagascar 2. At my showing, a family walked into the theater and sat in the row behind me, with several kids ranging in age from 4 to 10. This turned into a great social experiment of kids reacting to intense scenes and parenting. By the end of the first action scene (within the first five minutes of this very short film), one of the older kids in the group asked if he could movie from the end and sit to the adults, with the unmistakable sound of fear in his voice. And about 45 minutes into the movie, right around when we are introduced to the scariest looking character, the whole clan splits. Looks like it was too intense for the rugrats. I wonder if the kids asked to leave, or if the adults decided enough was enough. Either way, what's the deal here? These people could have easily checked online to see that 9 is rated PG-13 for "violence and scary images" as per the MPAA. But they probably just figured, "Let's take these kids to that new cartoon movie we know nothing about." This ranks right up there with when I saw groups of under-10 year olds at Miami Vice and Watchmen (though not as bad, since those were both blatantly R-rated movies for adults). So if you have small ones and insist on taking them to a PG-13 movie, make it G.I. Joe, because at least that one won't give them nightmares about having their mouths and bodies sewn shut by a baby doll headed snake creature with a red Terminator eye.
In summation, 9 is a well-made movie and fairly original (in that it puts together ideas from other movies in interesting ways). Fans of animated movies should really enjoy this one, and even people not into those cartoon movies will be a little surprised by the dangerous and creepy atmosphere of this flick.
Comments
I clicked but didn't read. I like to see movies with a clear mind so as not to affect my perspective. Will see it soon though and will come back to read.
Good idea, this movie has some cool reveals, and the review isn't going anywhere in the meantime.
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