9

This is the 2005 short film that inspired the new feature-length movie, 9. WARNING: This flick contains spoilers for the new movie.

9, the new film from director Shane Acker and producer Tim Burton, wants to inform us that technology will be our downfall, but also our resurrection. This is probably true of the human race, but has come to fruition even more immediately in the world of moviemaking. Modern filmmakers ignore originality of story and character development in favor of as many big explosions as they can fit into 90 minutes. On the flip-side, this technology has also been able to bring the complex and awe-inspiring visions of real artists to the big screen. Meanwhile, the standard movie-going audience sits in limbo, on one hand celebrating intellectually dead films like Transformers 2, then recognizing masterpieces and near-masterpieces like Star Trek, WALL-E or The Dark Knight.

Interestingly enough, 9 sits comfortably between these two paradigms. Acker’s visual goals are remarkable, as made evident from the opening frames, where old fingers work to put the finishing touches on a rag doll, both roughly human and curiously alien, the number “9” stitched into its back. Soon after, this creature (Elijah Wood) comes to life, and views the devastated remains of the human world with its inquisitive binocular eyes for the first time. However, the story soon gets underway, and as we meet the other rag dolls, numbered 1 thru 8, and learn of the plight of the now-extinct human race, we see the movie’s relatively familiar premise, and 9 becomes a rather curious experience.

The characters in 9 are very clearly defined despite how similar they are in appearance. For example, 5 (John C. Rielly) is intelligent yet terrified, accordingly obedient to those who appear smarter than he, while 1 (Christopher Plummer) acts as the self-proclaimed leader of the crew, and comes off as stubborn as he does assured. These sketches, as defined by the script by Acker and Corpse Bride scribe Pamela Pettler, are pieces of a whole personality, as easily recognizable as they can be predictable. This makes the characters fight against the film’s villain, The Beast (the man-made machine that destroyed the human race), almost entirely unsurprising, because we know these stereotypes all to well and everything they are about to do. While this ends up being necessary to the film’s central premise, this fragmentation causes the protagonists to be less fully-realized than their detailed appearances might indicate, dragging the pace of 9 down substantially.

The movie is not necessarily a disappointment, but as the film came to a close, I found myself wanting more. The movie is an expansion of Acker’s short film of the same name, which garnered him an Oscar nomination in 2006, and the visual promise and promising themes of that film alone warranted not only a viewing, but further exploration and analysis. But the story doesn’t stretch well to feature-length due simply to the fact that all of the film’s original ideas appeared in the 10:30 short subject.

The result is a film both marveling and unamazing; grandiose in vision but limited in scale. Does this make 9 unworthy of a viewing? Hardly — the visuals really are quite remarkable. But if you are looking for something as innovative as those visuals inherently promise, then I’m afraid you’ve barked up the wrong tree. Like the film’s protagonists, 9 is fragmented, all-together incomplete, and one hopes that Acker comes to the table with something more unique with his future endeavors.

Star Rating: 3.5