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Movie review: '9' (a nine or a nein?)
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9/2009 - Directed by Shane Acker
Starring: Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau and Crispin Hellion Glover
The Plot: Awakened a few years after man-made Armageddon, sack-doll-brought-to-life 9 (Elijah Wood) investigates what happened to the world as we once knew it. During his journey he meets the other sacklings in his numerical series and accidentally brings an automated evil back to life. Can 9 and his burlap kin stop the apocalypse one more time? Or will they all end up in the dollar bin of some apocalyptic garage sale?
The Good: I've got to hand it to 9, it's got some fantastic art direction in its corner. Enough so that this movie has been stationed firmly on my film radar since I first spotted the trailer for it last January. Now that all 80 minutes of the final product have arrived I can honestly say that this is an outstanding visual production. The characters are original, the world they inhabit has got that great "babes in wasteland" vibe. Shane Acker really put a lot of time and an ocean of creativity into bringing the world of 9 kicking and screaming into life as a visual medium.
That said this is much more an action film than it is anything else - hence the PG-13 rating. And as an animated action flick most of the time 9 is running from set-piece-to-set-piece, battle-to-battle - which works if all you need wanted from this particular film is three or four sweeping fight scenes sewn together with a very threadbare plot. Which is sort of 9's big weakness, it's all style and no substance. Kind of like L.A. Ink...
The Bad: I've never seen Shane Acker's original Oscar nominated short film 9 that this feature film is based on, but I'm betting it had little, if any, real dialog in the piece. Just like animation, great dialog is an art form all of its own. In 9 it's pretty much there to remind everybody where we're going to next and why we're going there. It's scripted, it's obvious, it has no real resonance or emotion, and it really handicaps these little sack-people as far as making the unreal character a living, breathing, natural character.
You know that magical liquid that PIXAR drenches all over their movies to make toys, rats, and robots feel like real people? Yeah, 9's all dried up on that formula. I'm thinking the purpose of this film was to bring inanimate objects to life - give these little burlap pod-people hearts and, (yes this film really does go there...) souls. As it turns out the numbered characters of 9 really are just little arts and crafts. They run, they fight, they even speak to each other - but so can Robosapien Humanoid Toy Robots - that doesn't make them real to me.
And I guess if I'm going to get picky, and this has everything to do with this animated film being PG-13 and aimed at a tall-enough-to-ride-the-roller-coaster age set, the story's a bit ridiculous. I can buy the artificial intelligence wipes out the entire human species storyline. It's a cliche, but it's a good one. We lost in a fair fight and I'll accept that much. But when nine five-inch-tall rag dolls rise up against the same enemy and do a better job then we did....? Nah. It's like a box of of Playtex Gentle Glide tampons - I ain't gonna' buy it.
The Ugly: All good dolls go to heaven... I'll leave it at that.
The Verdict: 9's got some terrific art direction and some wonderful action sequences. It's just a bit tragic that more effort wasn't put into the character interaction and the art of storytelling. As it plays out this is much more like Little Big Planet meets Fallout 3 than the fresh new animation concept that it really should have been.
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