? would have been a better title for 9.
It is a movie that raises many questions, such as "How did they screw this up so bad?" and "Why did I want to see this in the first place?" If you do choose to see 9 you will likely also be asking yourself ones like "This is it?," "Where the hell is the story?" and "What time is it?"
An amazingly disappointing, incredibly depressing, disaster of a movie. 9 has a number of major problems, click the Rawr! and we'll go through them all...
Six months ago Focus Features brought us
Coraline, an incredible stop motion animated film from the minds of
Neil Gaiman and
Henry Selick. It had a charm, an atmosphere, and a well told story. It is a shame that 9, the follow up animated feature that Focus is releasing, is such a complete disaster. Watching 9, it is immediately apparent that it is yet another animated feature that sacrificed its soul by being rushed through a pipeline. Luckily, the film is only 75 minutes long, so you won’t have long to lament its tragic lack of substance.
The trailers for 9 were amazing testaments to the illusory powers of editing and music.
Coheed and Cambria’s rock ballad injects an instant cool factor while deft cutting makes the film seem exciting and epic at the same time. The trailer’s ability to get people psyched up about the movie will also likely be one of the catalysts for their disappointment with what ultimately is a very repetitious and uninspired film.
I don’t think that I have ever seen an animated film with such promise fail so completely on so many levels.
9 started out as Shane Acker’s thesis film that he finished while at UCLA. It was a stylish and ambitious 10 minute short that had a few interesting ideas. The reason that it worked is because you don’t have to explain anything in a short. The viewer knows that they will have some loose ends and that they will be expected to fill in the gaps themselves. I really like the
PIXAR shorts, but that doesn’t mean that I want to see a feature length film based on Luxo Jr.
Feature films on the other hand demand more from the viewer who has paid 12+ dollars for the experience. We like to have some sort of story to lose ourselves in, characters to care about, and (especially with animation) a defined message. Think back to some of the most recent animated triumphs.
Up.
Kung-Fu Panda.
Surf’s Up. The quality of these films was due to phenomenal artist collectives sure, but most of all they had a true heart and soul that only comes through the development of characters. Characters that the script allows us to empathize with for a few hours.
9 is a student’s 10 minute vision that was given the backing of one of Hollywood’s biggest names and expected to compete with the industry’s best. Unfortunately, this is kind of like buying a Ferrari and putting a Datsun engine in it. It will not live up to expectations.
Basically all of human life has been exterminated by machines who were the product of a brilliant scientist. This scientist, knowing that the end is coming, decides to make tiny little dolls to give life to, so that they can save the future…?!? That is it. That is all we get.
The scientist separates his life-force into nine pieces which are embodied into the nine dolls. So… instead of trying to defeat the machine himself, he decides to start making miniature dolls to do it for him. Of course he doesn’t tell these dolls what it is that they are supposed to do, but instead leaves a cryptic message for them to decipher.
9 also manages to be one of the worst paced animated films that I have ever seen. The character 9 discovers a burlap buddy like himself, and they become instant friends. But they are quickly discovered and have to fight a machine, who takes away said friend. 9 then finds another friend and they fight another machine. And another, and another. All the while, trying to figure out why the machines are trying to kill them, and why the planet is the way it is. Because this seems to take place in every ten minutes, it is no wonder that it is so tedious to watch by the last 20 minutes.
Humor is practically non-present in this movie. Even in the most morose of movies, in the darkest of slasher movies, there is always humor. It is how we identify with and bond with the characters. You care a lot more for a person if they have made you laugh, right? Perhaps this is why I didn’t care at all for the plight of the characters. I just didn’t care. WALL-E, although a robot, had a true life force and personality. These bean bag robot type creatures have absolutely nothing interesting about them. It also doesn’t help that they are some of the most cliché personas imaginable. There’s the stern leader, the tough brute, the cute twins, the crazy one, the good hearted dreamer, the inventor, and the bad-ass warrior chic. So I guess part of the scientist’s soul was that of a bad-ass warrior chic? Um… okay? Seriously the plot sounds good for a short, but it is absolute crap when drawn out into a feature movie.
There was some amazing voice talent in this movie. Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landeau, etc., do an excellent job with what they have, unfortunately, the script is so bad that it doesn’t matter. Every single ounce of talent is squandered upon dialogue that only serves to move the plot forward. There is no sense of character growth whatsoever. If only they hired no-names and saved a boat load of money, they may have been able to do, I don’t know… do a few rewrites (or nine for that matter)!!!
This movie is probably THE most violent CG movie that I have ever seen. Every five to ten minutes there is another machine that has razor sharp claws, who is trying to eviscerate our burlap buddies. It is extremely intense at some parts and younger viewers will definitely have a hard time with it. Oh did I mention that some of their souls get sucked out of their bodies? And their lifeless bodies are discarded into the rubble. Except for one of the corpses, that is reanimated by a machine in order to lure in the others.
The animation is okay but it is incredibly obvious that they cut major corners. The main characters have a single texture applied to them which has absolutely no weight and is totally unconvincing. It doesn’t move or feel like burlap in the slightest. Remember
UP? Doug the dog had the convincing weight of a dog’s coat. This is not the case with 9. It may as well have been a video game cinematic from a few years ago. The
Oddworld games for
Playstation one had the same level of graphics!
The environments of 9 are very well done, but there is surprisingly little atmosphere to them. We are shown the remnants of chaos and destruction, but since these characters are not human, they really don’t seem to care about what happened. I mean what is the motivation for these characters, other than only self preservation? They can’t reproduce, everything is dead, there is no hope of redemption or turning the tide at all. It just doesn’t make any sense as a movie.
But that was never what this was about, was it? It wasn’t about making a quality film but making something passable that people would buy into because of the names associated with it.
By the end of 9 I was simply glad for it to be over. It is truly a shame that Burton attached his name to this film.
Edward Scissorhands,
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,
Ed Wood,
The Corpse Bride – these are movies which captured emotion and gave us characters to care about.
9, like its characters, is a film which beneath its thin veneer has only a partial soul.
Burton’s name is the reason that this film, despite its numerous shortcomings, will still turn a huge profit and be tops at the box office. Without his name, it would have stayed with the other American movies that are made in foreign countries to keep costs down. Movies like
Igor.
RAWR(for more)
