Rag-doll apocalypse is visually amazing, but plotline crashes and burns.
From watching trailer after trailer of 9, the most recent animated epic to hit theaters, I expected the amazing visual spectacle to have an equally interesting storyline. With Tim Burton (Sweeny Todd) as one of the executive producers, I predicted more of his creepy, unique, and interesting style. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It seems that Tim Burton just signed off on the project so that the movie would get more money in the box office (which makes sense, I guess). As long as people see Tim Burton, they think of Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and other wonders, and instantly flock to theaters. I haven’t been more disappointed in a film since Burn After Reading. (Coen brothers, 9/1/08)
Directed by Shane Acker, who created the original eleven-minute short, 9 follows a little rag-doll robot character known only as #9 through his attempts at surviving the apocalyptic wasteland that humanity has left behind. As he awakes in a crumbling house, we see just how void and barren of life the earth has become. Yet, in all of its disparaging hopelessness, 9’s simple curiosity propels him from the sanctity of the house into the world. Before leaving, he finds a strange, brooch-like talisman that he instinctively takes with him. Outside, he soon encounters another rag-doll by the name of #2 in the junk-filled dirty streets, and the two share a moment of friendship and clarity as 9 learns that he is not alone. However, this moment does not last, and a terrifying, cat-like creature known as the Beast attacks the rag-dolls. 2 is captured along with the talisman, and the Beast heads off towards a immense factory on the horizon. Though the movie had just started, I already began to feel the seeds of doubt begin to grow in my mind. First of all, 9 wakes up and completely ignores the dead scientist body on the floor. Seriously, I don’t care how new to the world he is, I’m pretty sure the first thing I’d notice, if it were me in this giant new world, is the very large dead guy at my feet. 9 wakes up mute, and after 2 finds him a voice box, his first word is, “Friend?” Can you say lame? It’s the exact example of why elementary schoolchildren don’t write movie scripts.
9 barely escapes from the Beast with his life, and stumbles onto the small faction of remaining rag-dolls, consisting of numbers 1, 5, 6, and 8. Led by 1, the group has been hiding in a church in fear of the Beast, and 1 refuses to endanger the safety of the rest of the group by finding 2. However, 9 persuades 5 to help him in his quest, and together they enter the factory. Originally, I expected the confrontation with the Beast to be at the end; a drawn out climactic ending. Instead, the Beast didn’t last too long, going down in the very beginning, killed by the mysterious #7 who appears out of thin air. While everyone dances and cheers, 9 wanders off and predictably sticks the talisman into a similarly shaped socket, ruining everybody’s fun.
Just in case the plot wasn’t going too fast already, 9 awakens a giant machine that saps 2’s soul right out of his patchwork body. The three survivors flee back to the sanctity of the church, and the viewer is left to watch as the machine begins to create smaller machines to hunt the rag-dolls down. This is almost as confusing as it is annoying and utterly expected. How the heck does a machine run on souls? Why the heck does the machine want their souls? Why the heck should we care? The answer is, we shouldn’t. Basically, the director took as many clichés as he could, gave them to an energetic three year old, and made a movie out of whatever random clichés the child picked.
The rest of the movie is a bit complicated to explain without giving away the ending, but the general synopsis is that the rag-dolls all meet up, including the mute twins 3 and 4, are attacked numerous times by the machine’s creations, decide they must destroy said machine, discover that the scientist who gave them life also created the machine, and that mankind and our war machines/lust for power is evil. Ooh look, another movie where robots we made to serve humanity turned against us! This seemingly original piece is chock full of plot holes, clichés, and failure.
Here’s the conundrum: this movie is definitely worth seeing because the visual aspect is simply spectacular; just don’t expect to be blown away by the rest. The animation is amazingly detailed, breathtakingly vibrant, and just plain awesome, but the storyline is so weak that a first-grader could have written it better. The movie is worth seeing solely because it is probably the greatest animated work I’ve ever seen. 9 is only 79 minutes long, so the story feels like it’s moving too fast, and the emotional aspect is incredibly strained. To be honest, I absolutely hated the ending. The storyline was blatantly predictable, but the ending was a surprise. Not a pleasant surprise, mind you, but the kind of surprise one gets when tripped by a friend and laughed at.
I had high hopes for this movie, and I was let down by the lack of a good story. Before you see this movie, look up the original short film, because then it makes a little more sense. The movie is garbage, very beautifully animated and intricate garbage, but at the end of the day, it still smells funny.
