Review: 9

9 is the kind of film that you watch the trailer and feel a sense of anticipation over whether the movie itself can live up. Smarter viewers may have had the foresight to realize that the chances of this movie being as cool as the trailer were very slim. The main problem with 9 is that it ends up being what essentially amounts to a more drawn out version of the trailer. Things happen fast in this movie... really fast. From the opening moments where main character 9 awakens to a very post apocalyptic world, the plot moves at a bullet's pace. One moment he's becoming self-aware and the next he's meeting another sack-goggle-man. Then a mysterious cat robot is attacking and stealing a mysterious rune found by 9 in the first few moments of the film. All of this transpires in the first ten to fifteen minutes, and while it is very cool to watch, the movie starts to feel like all flash and no substance. This is not to say that 9 doesn't attempt to inject moments of exposition though. Instead the movie does try admirably to introduce the world and the little mechanical characters within. The only problem here is that when this movie slows down, it doesn't do a good job of informing us while not simultaneously boring us half to death.

9 relies far too heavily on the draw of its art style and quirky look of its characters. Passed the fact that they are cool looking sack robots that run around fighting with exacto knives and have staffs that have gears attached for style, there's not much presented in this movie to make it all seem intriguing. For instance there's a sack-pope leading a highly insular group by staying secret... but outside of the fact that he's wearing a cool pope-hat and a cape, the character is sadly one dimensional. He's afraid of the outside world and he's awfully close-minded. That's it. Even main character 9 is little more than the eager minded new guy who asks dangerous and controversial questions. The most interesting character in the film that did not feel shoe horned into some cliche archetype was voiced by John C. Reilly. Number 5 plays slightly naive, but overall is the only character going through a believable set of emotions and reactions that don't play specifically to his strictly defined character description.

Characters come and go in this movie so quickly and events transpire likewise. It's hard to stop and care about what you're seeing passed the occasional "oh man, that was cool looking". In the end the movie basically follows a predictable throughline which will have you more or less guessing the sequence of events. 'Blunt' is the best word I can think to describe 9. If it isn't set out right in front of you in plain terms, then there is no use thinking about it further than that. To its credit, the movie does try to end on a slightly ambiguous, interpretable note that leaves the viewer the task of deciding what is going to happen next. The biggest problem here is that in a movie where everything has been spoon fed with a pat on the head, the audience doesn't really care to engage themselves enough to meet this haphazard attempt at mystery halfway.

9 is based on director Shane Acker's short film of the same name. I think this is probably the main reason the feature length version falls so short. As a brief and silent vignette, the style of the movie and the pacing of the events works insanely well. It's evocative, it makes you think, and you don't have to sit through cliched dialogue coming from predictably defined characters. Obviously stretching the movie to fit a feature length, the short story had to be padded and expanded in multiple areas. Unfortunately for as cool and edgy as the film ends up being, the heart and soul of the source material was never meant to be spread so thin.

In the end, 9 is one of those films you try so hard to love but it never pays you back. If you still feel an irrepressible need to go out and check this movie out, I'd suggest waiting until it's either free on cable or available to rent. At best a diversion, at worst boring; 9 is another product of ambitious scope and a lack of execution.