9 - Review
“Nine” is a film that has Penelope Cruz singing and dancing in burlesque stills (at least in the movie posters I’ve seen).
This is the other film called nine. Sorry, “9”.
What we have here is Toy Story gone dark and post-apocalyptic – and despite his being one of the producers there are no Burton-esque spindly limbs. And there’s no Penelope Cruz.
A toy made by a the last actions of a now deceased mad scientist comes to life and starts exploring the desolate post-war landscape he finds himself in. He rapidly discovers he is “9” and that 1-8 also exist (the scientist clearly having been heavily influenced by communist naming conventions). The mad scientists’ earlier efforts are also roaming around but these are much more evil, huge, angry things with red eyes, big teeth and spiky bits. Oh, and they’ve managed to kill everything on earth apart from our friends “1” to “9”.
The rest of the film centers on the journeys to and fro across a desolate landscape to the towering edifice that houses the biggest, spikiest, bad-guy-spiky-thing that needs destroying – both it and it’s legions of scary spiky thing minions.
Shane Acker directed and on this evidence, I’ll seek out some of his other work. It says a lot about modern animation techniques that I expected flawless imagery and 9 delivered – the visuals are easily up there with anything Pixar has produced. Tim Burton is probably the best known of the team of producers and although his influence is muted, there is still a suitably dark feeling throughout. The tale flows at a decent pace (I didn’t find myself checking my watch once – my usual barometer of an entertaining film) with more chases and monster-fights than you could shake an evil spiky stick at. For most of the film I thoroughly enjoyed myself, alternately soaking up the story then trying to remember what I was being reminded of (there’s shades of everything from Pinnochio to The Matrix to Enemy at the Gates to Lord of The Rings and loads of other movies all minced together here). And there’s some podgy toys running around a dark, desolate wasteground killing evil spiky things.
So what’s not to like? Well, I didn’t feel there were many of the “laugh out loud” comic moments that I had hoped for. Also, I was expecting it to be a challenge to make the ending as entertaining as the chase parts of the film and apparently I was right and I didn’t quite get the result.
But that was the last 5 minutes and up to that point I might not have been roaring with laughter but I really enjoyed myself and I’m glad I was able to enjoy 9 on the big screen when most of the eventual audience will see it in their living rooms having bought the blu-ray or DVD.
Was it worth the entrance fee? - Yes – even the extortionate rates charged at my local picture house.
Would you recommend it to your friends? - My friends yes – the smaller of their kids – possibly not.
No spindly limbs? Are you sure Tim Burton was involved? – Well, his names’ on the credits but I could only see one or two trademark Burton bad-guys... and Johnny Depp was no-where to be seen so I’m not entirely convinced...