A dark but beautiful offering of CGI about a post-apocalyptic world and 9 humanoid robots with a mysterious mission to carry out. Shane Acker directs this movie although the trailers and signs all point to the more popular Tim Burton. To top off this confusion (Burton produced it) we are shown creatures that play more than a little homage to A Nightmare Before Christmas. But even though Shane Acker directs it, for the Burton loving audience, 9 will not disappoint. I will however warn you that before you see it, be sure to be alert, awake and attentive because this isn't your run-of-the-mill, so simple a 9 yr old could have wrote it, story. This is a complex, decide for yourself, watch and pay attention type of story in a nice CGI coat that may fool you that it is a children story.
Starting out with the scientist (Alan Oppenheimer) crafting the future protagonist 9 (Elijah Wood), we are given a clue that the world has gone all to hell, and the all too familiar theme of machines taking over comes to play. 9 is a curious creature, a sack-boy with mechanical parts, he is adorable but not in a teddy bear kind of way, we are shown a bit of innocence in him which contrasts his world that looks very much like the aftermath of a war. At one part in the film we are shown the marching of soldiers to a dictator whose symbol and gait echo a resemblance to Adolph Hitler of World War 2. The steam punk influence combined with the 1940s style of art makes the world foreign but familiar and even with the flashbacks and the hints, the world of 9 just never feels like our world to me. As the movie progresses, 9 runs into the other 8 members of his tiny robot race, all being named after their respective numbers and each having a dramatically different personality from the other.
The toughest and probably my favorite of the lot was the only female (I could tell from the voice), the mask wearing, blade wielding 7 (Jennifer Connelly). Numbers 1 (Christopher Plummer) and 2 (Martin Landau) were the eldest and number 8 (Fred Tatasciore) was the typical strong oaf. 5 (John C. Reilly) was the loving and innocent healer of the bunch and 6 (Crispin Glover) was an artist. The twins 3 and 4 never talk but loved to chronicle and record events to playback for the others. The bad guys as you may have guessed by now were the machines. The flawed inventions of man who turned on their masters and decimated the human race.
The tale of 9 is one that has been in film since the original Metropolis with the robot version of Maria leading the overworked serfs to destroy the very machinery that kept their world running. Most of us may remember The Matrix which echoed the same tale of the renegade machine. Terminator also comes to mind with Skynet and many others. The unique thing about this story however is it isn't left up to some dark haired human to save the human race. This dark tale wipes us out and places the future in the hands of tiny machines the size of your hand. The story of 9 is a dark, dark one with a very bleak outlook for humanity and our ability to self-destruct. Within the world of 9 lays the debris and remnants of war and death. The corpses of the fallen lay strewn about, the sky has a steady flow of dark clouds and things die as naturally as they appear on screen.
As much as I loved this story, I wish I could have had a bit more. The team of 9 are each love-able in their own right but we are left to our own theories about their history. Nothing is explained to the audience outside of the reasoning for their existence, we get no personal background stories or grand flashbacks of happy times. This is why you should flex your creative muscles when viewing it, since the movie spans only 79 minutes, we are given the raw outline and forced to make do with what we have. For me this was enough and I thought 9 to be a well paced story about a very, very dark time. I would not recommend this for young children and I would think that the PG-13 rating would clue you in on that. But for the big kids and sci-fi loving adults, I would urge you to get out there and see it.
More reviews from me at www.SpicyMovieDogs.com.
Starting out with the scientist (Alan Oppenheimer) crafting the future protagonist 9 (Elijah Wood), we are given a clue that the world has gone all to hell, and the all too familiar theme of machines taking over comes to play. 9 is a curious creature, a sack-boy with mechanical parts, he is adorable but not in a teddy bear kind of way, we are shown a bit of innocence in him which contrasts his world that looks very much like the aftermath of a war. At one part in the film we are shown the marching of soldiers to a dictator whose symbol and gait echo a resemblance to Adolph Hitler of World War 2. The steam punk influence combined with the 1940s style of art makes the world foreign but familiar and even with the flashbacks and the hints, the world of 9 just never feels like our world to me. As the movie progresses, 9 runs into the other 8 members of his tiny robot race, all being named after their respective numbers and each having a dramatically different personality from the other.
The toughest and probably my favorite of the lot was the only female (I could tell from the voice), the mask wearing, blade wielding 7 (Jennifer Connelly). Numbers 1 (Christopher Plummer) and 2 (Martin Landau) were the eldest and number 8 (Fred Tatasciore) was the typical strong oaf. 5 (John C. Reilly) was the loving and innocent healer of the bunch and 6 (Crispin Glover) was an artist. The twins 3 and 4 never talk but loved to chronicle and record events to playback for the others. The bad guys as you may have guessed by now were the machines. The flawed inventions of man who turned on their masters and decimated the human race.
The tale of 9 is one that has been in film since the original Metropolis with the robot version of Maria leading the overworked serfs to destroy the very machinery that kept their world running. Most of us may remember The Matrix which echoed the same tale of the renegade machine. Terminator also comes to mind with Skynet and many others. The unique thing about this story however is it isn't left up to some dark haired human to save the human race. This dark tale wipes us out and places the future in the hands of tiny machines the size of your hand. The story of 9 is a dark, dark one with a very bleak outlook for humanity and our ability to self-destruct. Within the world of 9 lays the debris and remnants of war and death. The corpses of the fallen lay strewn about, the sky has a steady flow of dark clouds and things die as naturally as they appear on screen.
As much as I loved this story, I wish I could have had a bit more. The team of 9 are each love-able in their own right but we are left to our own theories about their history. Nothing is explained to the audience outside of the reasoning for their existence, we get no personal background stories or grand flashbacks of happy times. This is why you should flex your creative muscles when viewing it, since the movie spans only 79 minutes, we are given the raw outline and forced to make do with what we have. For me this was enough and I thought 9 to be a well paced story about a very, very dark time. I would not recommend this for young children and I would think that the PG-13 rating would clue you in on that. But for the big kids and sci-fi loving adults, I would urge you to get out there and see it.
More reviews from me at www.SpicyMovieDogs.com.