9 (2009)

This movie's name is probably the most interesting part of it.  Sad, i know.

Another movie advertised off of the producer.  Probably something to be expected from our money lovin' society that the money lender gets higher billing than the creative artists involved.  I like Tim Burton's work, as a director, but to try and market every movie he even lent money to as a "Tim Burton" is just nauseating!  But this is a rant for another day.  What about the movie 9?

The movie takes place in a futuristic world after a war between machines and humans have all but destroyed it.  Yeah, we're doing that again, apparently.  The movie is about a group of mini-robots made out of gloves or something called the stitchpunks.  The titular 9 is the protagonist of the film (though not the leader).

The biggest selling point for this movie seems to be its animation quality.  Unfortunately, it's about 10 years too late for its CGI to be considered novel.  Even then, full CGI movies that were novel were brought to us by the likes of Pixar, who are masters of weaving good stories.  Remember when CGI was cool just because?  Yeah, me neither.

What's worse, 9 is one of those movies that pretends to have hidden depths.  Not has hidden depths - pretends to have.  Despite all the writers' attempts to the contrary, 9 is ultimately a very shallow piece of fiction.  What few depths it does have have been done a million times before a million times better.  And if you think that's hyperbolic, you just haven't seen the movie.  What story there is is so incredibly stupid, it's embarrassing!

Even the climax of this movie is embarrassingly shallow.  That warm feelings i got during the resolution were not of heartwarming, but of humiliation and embarrassment.  It was very much my hope that my fellow theatre goers didn't see me sitting in the theatre watching the movie with them (lest they think less of me).

As for the characters, there are a lot of words i could use to describe them but "annoying" generally sums it up.  A group of mostly cowards, the stitchpunks are not that interesting to watch.  The only non-cowards of the group just seem uninteresting.  They even seem to have this attitude about each other.  The most interesting one of the lot is 9 himself.  Even then, his most defining characteristic is his "niceness".  This is in the same vein as batman's most defining characteristic is his badass-ness.  So, yeah.

There are other characters, like the only female stitchpunk, 7 (yeah, you know what that means).  But by in large, the movie's not about them and they just serve to act as walking, talking plot devices.  Need 9 to be heroic?  Throw in a stitchpunk to be saved.  Need 9 to be a leader?  Throw in a stitchpunk to be lead.  Need 9 to be in a conflict?  Yup, there's a stitchpunk for that, too.  In fact, there's a stitchpunk for pretty much everything.

The one that bugged me the most was, by far, 7.  I'm not sure why, but i think a lot of it had to do with the assigned attribute of being "mysterious".  All the stitchpunks treat her like some kind of aloof loner, but nothing she does leads the viewer to believe this is what she's like.  Nothing, that is, except bailing on a moments notice (and she's the "warrior" of the group, people!).  What's worse is, there's quite literally only 9 forms of "life" on the planet that are friendly to the stitchpunks.  How is it they know nothing about her?  It doesn't make any sense!

The one saving grace of the movie is that it's mercifully short.  Unfortunately, it's still the longest hour and a half on record.

I didn't pay to see this movie (i used a free ticket given to me by a friend), but i still felt ripped off.  Unfortunately nothing i can say or do will ever bring back that free ticket...

Even though i used to be a fan of Tim Burton, his produce credit needs a lot of work now.

I give it, er... 4 and a half numbers out of 9.  D - D minus.  Really, i'm just being overly generous.

Picture: one of these days i'll have an original idea for the artwork.  And on that day, i shall draw it!