9 Movie Review
In 2005 Shane Acker, an animator for Weta Workshop and AtomFilms, directed a short CG film titled, 9. This short went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short, but more importantly it caught the eye of Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov. The three set about expanding the 11-minute burst of fresh air to an 81-minute feature length film
I first saw the trailer for 9, the feature film, months ago. That trailer blew my mind and raised my expectations. The trailer looked imaginative, exciting, and most importantly, it looked fun. It looked like the type of sophisticated animation that I had always hoped America would grow to create, instead of taking a back seat to Japan and Europe. I had all of these hopes in spite of a personal law of computer-animated movies of mine that states, “if it isn’t Pixar, it isn’t good.” I finally got to test out my law at a screening of this movie I had anticipated so much.
When the movie begins we are treated to a beautifully scarred landscape of post apocalyptic destruction, painted in hues of black and sepia tones. It starts very much like a fairy tale, (very much like Pinocchio, actually) as 9, a small stitched doll, awakens to life in the workshop of his dead creator. He wanders in a dangerous world holding a brass medallion when he stumbles upon one of his own, 2. 2 for some reason acts as if he knows 9 personally, even though he was jut born two seconds ago. They are hunted by another machine, a cat-like robot, which abducts 2 and steals the medallion. 9 makes his way to the enclave of other “stitchpunks”. They set about saving 2 and retrieving the medallion. Along the way there is a lot of walking and dull conversation. Apparently Elijah Wood, who voiced the lead character 9, is only allowed to do movies that involve a lot of walking after Lord of the Rings. The entire thing pretty much falls apart from this point on until it comes crawling to an unsatisfying revelation and to an ending that will make you say out loud, “really, rain?”
It’s actually appropriate that the rag dolls are named with numbers because they are certainly not characters. They all act and do things without any motivation at all. When they die in the movie, there isn’t any impact because you were never shown why you should care about these things. The plot itself is so terribly thin that it barely holds up the feature and on top of that it doesn’t make any logical sense. The movie itself is so humorless and joyless that is makes Fantastic Planet look like a laugh riot. At 81 minutes you expect the movie to move at a neck breaking speed but instead is so slowly paced that it is almost grueling to watch because you are experiencing their journey in real-time.
I really wondered to myself: who was the intended target audience? It is too dark for young children, too slow for teenagers, too boring for action/adventure fans and the story is too banal for filmgoers. I am sure there are going to be a few goth kids and steampunk cosplayers that are going to love this movie because of one thing –it is really pretty. The only thing this film has to stand on is its visual look, but with a limited palet of black, grey and brown that too becomes dull after a while.
I had hoped that the movie would break the idea that American animation can only be produced for children, I had hope that his movie would raise the art form to be finally respected by Americans, but instead it just reinforced my belief in computer-animated movies: “if it isn’t Pixar, it isn’t good.” 9 will be released in theaters on September 9, 2009. Good luck.
