The end of the world looks like Hell on earth in 9. There are no humans. What were once buildings have been reduced to smouldering slabs of bric a brac. The sky is a smear of excreta, streaked with lines of charcoal smoke. Still, the effect is not quite grim and dark. Back-lit by devilish fires, each shot of the battered urban scape is like looking at an imaginative wall-hanging. The whole movie is like that though, very gorgeous and remote. And as a dramatic story its not for a minute the least bit convincing.
9 is the directorial debut of Shane Acker, and this digitally animated feature, produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch) is essentially an 80 minute re-make - re-tooled and expanded - of his award-winning 11-minute short, also called 9. Critics reviewing the film have had great fun name checking a long list of animation masters, every thing from the experimental genius of The Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer, to the ticklish brilliance of Pixar, all in an effort to approximate the films peculiar aesthetic; a world of wire, broken dolls, and rusted metal.
Still, 9 seems to be more Disney grubbied up with a lot of existential off-cuts via The Terminator, Wall-E et al than a genuinely scary re-think of a fairytale a la Burton. For starters the movies heroes – little hessian dolls with helpless and huge pleading eyes like a kid begging for attention - are as a cute as a bagful of puppies. Then there’s the villain’s – a dog-like (or cat-like) skeleton figure that looks suspiciously like a wobbly mechano-set on legs and a bigger monster that takes its cues from the 50’s version of The War of the Worlds.
The plot is simple. A war between humans and machines have devastated humanity. 9 (who takes his name from a stencil on his back and is voiced by Elijah Wood) finds that he is alone in the world with a bunch of other rag-doll like creatures. 9’s innocence brings them all into peril. He has to summon courage to overwhelm the Mechanical Monster.
Where Pixar is light on its feet, its dialogue rippling with jokes even when things get intense, the script of 9 is dour and downbeat and leaden with a lot of exposition and freighted with earnest philosophising. None of the stellar voice cast – Christopher Plummer, John Reilly, Martin Landau or Jennifer Connolly sound like they’re having fun and its not surprising since their characters seem to exist to impart information or else are there to represent an Idea"¦Hope, Charity, Selfishness, etc. The action of the movie consists mainly of frantic fight scenes between the heroes and the baddies, followed by a chase, then a dialogue piece, where the drama is explained and this is repeated until the movies climax – a battle to the death!
The film seems designed for a wide audience (a dark fairytale, perhaps that adults can enjoy?), yet its vision is limited to a stunning visual style. For a movie that ends on a plea for social responsibility there's no sense of emotion, indeed, humanity about the story. It's all mechanics, bits and pieces. It's a fantasy that reminds you of the best bits of other movies.
