At The Movies

9 about 9

I went to see 9 yesterday. Here’s what I liked about it:

1. Design: 9 manages to tackle some very familiar influences and roots in its design without turning out stale, and that to me is quite an achievement. It is a thing of imaginative beauty and this aspect of the film at least ought to be applauded. The sack people look great. The machines too are lovely. It’s really a showpiece that ought to be marvelled at.
2. Animated People: Of course, all the pretty design in the world wouldn’t make a difference if the film didn’t look good, but it does. It’s some pretty decent work by the studio.
3. Set-Piece Spectacular: When I emerged from the theatre, the thing that stuck with me was the monsters and the action sequences. 9 is at its best when it pits the little sack people against this or that giant machine monster. It’s in these sequences that the film manages to prove that it’s a gripping piece of filmmaking.
4. Nice Direction: Shane Acker does a pretty great job, especially considering that he probably could have had some more material to work with.

And here’s what I didn’t like about it

1. Dialogue Dud: The dialogue isn’t terrible. It just never catches you, and sometimes even manages to bore you. The characters never say anything terribly clever or memorable, and it always seems to border on the obvious. It feels a bit like the script came out of a standard Saturday morning cartoon. Yes, I think obvious is the word. Obvious and tired.
2. No Character: 9 is made up of obvious characters who tend to be mostly one-dimensional. It doesn’t help that most of them don’t actually end up having a lot of screen time.  Lead character #9, for instance, is about as exciting as a cardboard box, and he is flanked by #5 and #7, the first a secondary character who seems to be there just to say the things that needed saying and the latter presumably a potential love interest although they didn’t really seem to be very interested in exploring any of that. The end-result is that it’s quite difficult to invest very much into the film.
3. Ending, Wut?: I think quite a bit has been said about the ending, and I suppose it tried not to seem like a cop-out, but it was a little bit convenient and definitely felt rushed. And the final, final scene was a little bizarre and strange to me for some reason. It’s almost as if it didn’t want to live with the consequences of earlier plot devices.
4. Dull Drama: 9 tries to be dramatic, but it doesn’t do drama very well. Part of it will imaginably be down to the characters, but it also just fails to push the right buttons for the drama to succeed.
5. Too Short: It’s short. About 80 minutes or under. And I think if it afforded more time to fleshing out the ending, put in an additional monster or two (or gave more time to the existing ones), gave the characters a little more space (and thought), it might have been a much better film.

As it stands though, 9 feels more like a technical showpiece than a proper movie. It’s a beautiful piece of work, but it’s also threadbare in the narrative department, which left me more than a little disappointed.

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© 2009 a modest odyssey.