9
Focus Features
PG-13
79 Minutes
2009
Expectations have a nasty way of getting the better of you. Rarely does a movie truly live up to the expectations we build for it in our own minds, and this is even rarer after months of anticipation.
Shane Acker's original short film, 9, was nominated for an Academy Award and impressed famed director Tim Burton so much that Burton and director Timmu Bekmambetov, best known for his work on 2008's phenominal high action graphic novel adaptation of Wanted, produced a feature length reimagining of the story.
Featuring stunning visuals, a superb voice cast including Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, and Crispin Glover, 9 looked like it would be one of the most imaginative, impressive films of the year. Upon viewing the trailer that preceded Coraline (still one of the year's best films), 9 jumped right to the top of 2009's must-see list.
Unfortunately, seven months later, my expectations did indeed get the better of me.
9 is by no means a terrible film. From an technical artistry standpoint, it's a masterpiece. This is a movie sure to become high definition demo material when it eventually makes the leap to Blu-ray sometime next year. The level of detail in the sackcloth inhabitants of the desolate wasteland that serves as their home, which we are led to believe is Earth after humanity has been wiped out, is nothing short of astounding. The characters are beautifully animated and the film is drenched with amazing visuals, despite its subdued pallette of mostly browns and grays.
I can't offer too many complaints about the voice acting either. Wood does an admirable job, and Plummer is fantastic as the arrogant, self-proclaimed leader of the band of survivors. Sound design is punchy and appropriately bombastic during the action sequences, which are numerous, and Deborah Lurie's score is even impressive.
So what gives? Why was 9 such a disappointment?
Well, it's sort of like meeting a really hot person in a bar. Sure, it looks nice, but chances are it's not going to hold your interest for very long unless all you're interested in is looks. There's just not that much else there.
9's plot is more than a little redundant, and it borrows liberally from the age-old science fiction notion of sentient artificial intelligence. It owes more than a little to films like The Matrix and 2001: A Space Odyssey in both its plot and robot designs. While man is slowly exterminated by the robot uprising, killed by its own creation, a single scientist creates ragdoll beings out of sackcloth, zippers, buttons, and other practical gizmos. Their purpose is unknown, even to themselves. A small group of them, led by 1 (Plummer), have dedicated their lives merely to hiding and surviving, while others such as 7 (Connelly) have chosen to fight back as best they can.
The bigger problem isn't necessarily the film's somewhat unoriginal plot, but its running time. At only 79 minutes, there is no time to grow attached to the characters before they're heading off into one dangerous adventure after the other. Perhaps there's only so much personality you can stuff into the sack-people, but each numbered ragdoll is little more than a 3D rendered one-dimensional character. Perhaps this was the director's intent, given the film's big reveal of their true nature, but if that were the case then it creates a glaring anachronism when they change their behavior throughout the course of the film.
I enjoyed watching the friendship develop between 9 and 5 (Reilly), for instance, but before you know it, one of them is in danger again. As soon as they escape, someone else is in danger. I felt like the film could have benefited from being longer and developing the characters' personalities more, but that creates a whole new set of problems because the sad fact is that 9 isn't nearly as original in concept as its visuals. It's a story that has been told before, and told better, with cool and unique ragdolls standing in for real people.
There are some darker moments, and the advertising made a point of the fact that this was not a film for children, but the film moves at such a rapid pace that it's hard to ever get a grasp on what's going on. It's one rescue sequence after the other, 1 is a jerk with a predictable character arc, and I don't think it's really a big spoiler by stating that 9 saves the day. Before you know it, it's all over and the credits are rolling.
In the end, 9 is another case of style over substance. It looks great - undoubtedly one of the most impressive animated films to date - but there's little else beyond the superficial good looks. If only the story were as original, inventive, and imaginative as its sack-people creations, 9 could have been an instant animation classic and the type of film that further solidifies animation as a serious storyteller's medium. In the face of spectacular and superior animated films like Coraline and Up, however, 9's flashy visuals just don't amount to much.
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