9 (R, 1:19) — SF, 2nd string, original
Boy, I so wanted to like this picture, but it's sort of the inverse of last week's Gamer (4), which I described as having good story ideas badly executed. 9, OTOH, is wonderfully imaginative in its production design and execution but disappointingly single-threaded in plot.
It opens with scenes of WW1-style warfare and destruction, accompanied by a sad voice-over: "We had such potential... Our world is ending, but life must go on.". And then we see consciousness arriving for a spindle-shaped burlap guy with camera-shutter eyes and a giant hand-lettered "9" on its back; "he" (I guess) is filled with wonder at who he is, what's going on, and what this world is all about. He appears to have a giant zipper up the front, but as he makes his way across a desktop and a book to reach a shuttered window, we realize that the zipper is normal size, it's the guy who's little — about cat-sized.
This is 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood), and shortly he meets fellow fabric manikins 1–8, all of whom are refugees from the last of the machines that had recently exterminated humanity. That this is an alternate reality is evident from the battle scenes, all clockwork, gaslight, rust-covered, early 20th Century tech, not a glimmer of electronics (let alone Skynet) anywhere in sight.
The rest of the movie is devoted to 1–9 trying to escape from the last monster machine — a large, clanking, single-minded contraption with a big glowing red "eye" and multiple bladed arms — a construct capable of (apparently) sucking the souls out of any of these little gunnysack digits it can grab.
And that's about it for plot.
I appreciated that the boldest character among the dolloids, the intrepid 7, had a female voice (Jennifer Connelly). Unfortunately, "she" appeared to be the only "woman" in the movie. There were no overt evidences of gender on any of the burlap critters, so if the future of life on Earth is dependent on these little dudes reproducing, it looks like a pretty long shot. Most post-apocalyptic stories at least try to offer a ray of hope at the end, but this one looked frankly bleak. I give it an extra point for that, simply because it's a relatively daring thing for a movie to do.
The animation was evidently done (or at least supervised) by Starz Animation, and it has a consistent look and feel to it, as original as The Nightmare before Christmas (7), and this too earns some credit in my book. Animation can give you all the time and space in the world, but this final drama on Earth is cramped, taking place in about a day in a ruined cityscape within about 2 klicks of the house where 9 first wakes up.
So, even tho it fell short of my hopes, there are sufficient positive aspects that it edges up to the top of my "up to you" range and gets a 6. I guess that's 9 upside down, huh?
Boy, I so wanted to like this picture, but it's sort of the inverse of last week's Gamer (4), which I described as having good story ideas badly executed. 9, OTOH, is wonderfully imaginative in its production design and execution but disappointingly single-threaded in plot.
It opens with scenes of WW1-style warfare and destruction, accompanied by a sad voice-over: "We had such potential... Our world is ending, but life must go on.". And then we see consciousness arriving for a spindle-shaped burlap guy with camera-shutter eyes and a giant hand-lettered "9" on its back; "he" (I guess) is filled with wonder at who he is, what's going on, and what this world is all about. He appears to have a giant zipper up the front, but as he makes his way across a desktop and a book to reach a shuttered window, we realize that the zipper is normal size, it's the guy who's little — about cat-sized.
This is 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood), and shortly he meets fellow fabric manikins 1–8, all of whom are refugees from the last of the machines that had recently exterminated humanity. That this is an alternate reality is evident from the battle scenes, all clockwork, gaslight, rust-covered, early 20th Century tech, not a glimmer of electronics (let alone Skynet) anywhere in sight.
The rest of the movie is devoted to 1–9 trying to escape from the last monster machine — a large, clanking, single-minded contraption with a big glowing red "eye" and multiple bladed arms — a construct capable of (apparently) sucking the souls out of any of these little gunnysack digits it can grab.
And that's about it for plot.
I appreciated that the boldest character among the dolloids, the intrepid 7, had a female voice (Jennifer Connelly). Unfortunately, "she" appeared to be the only "woman" in the movie. There were no overt evidences of gender on any of the burlap critters, so if the future of life on Earth is dependent on these little dudes reproducing, it looks like a pretty long shot. Most post-apocalyptic stories at least try to offer a ray of hope at the end, but this one looked frankly bleak. I give it an extra point for that, simply because it's a relatively daring thing for a movie to do.
The animation was evidently done (or at least supervised) by Starz Animation, and it has a consistent look and feel to it, as original as The Nightmare before Christmas (7), and this too earns some credit in my book. Animation can give you all the time and space in the world, but this final drama on Earth is cramped, taking place in about a day in a ruined cityscape within about 2 klicks of the house where 9 first wakes up.
So, even tho it fell short of my hopes, there are sufficient positive aspects that it edges up to the top of my "up to you" range and gets a 6. I guess that's 9 upside down, huh?