Movie Review: 9

9 Here is a strange movie. The advertizing made a big deal of it being a Tim Burton production, But a guy named Shane Acker directed it, and Shane and Pamela Pettler wrote it. I guess Tim fronted the money for it. This full-length feature is animated, but it is not a cartoon. It is directed at a specific audience, like all Burton movies.
The story is post-apocalyptic. A terrible war has been fought and there are no survivors, at least in the area where the story takes place. Several small, doll-like “creatures”, automatons, are all that is left and they have no clue what is going on. They find each other, have scary, dangerous adventures, and slowly follow clues that lead them to the discovery of who (what) they are, and how they came to be. Sort of. They were made by a scientist who was pessimistic about the survival of humanity. He built a device that was able to transfer parts of his soul to each of his nine, diminutive creations.
The movie is worth seeing because of the masterful animation and the over-all style of the production. It is engaging. One of the fascinating features is the technology extant in this imaginary world. It is very similar to the retro Sci-Fi sub-genre called Steampunk, which deals with fantastic inventions of a mechanical nature, as if revisiting Jules Vern. The little entities are very inventive, building weapons and armor and all kinds of devices out of the scraps and detritus of the just-ended war. The look and feel of the movie is wonderful. The characters are fairly-well developed within the limitations of the plot. There’s the usual tension, antagonism, rivalry and even redemption.
Ultimately, however, the story seems weak. We are thrown into the situation along with the Numbers, (the only identification of the characters.) And we never really find out much about what happened or what the fate of the little creatures might be. They are mechanical, imbued with some of the essence of a human, and that’s about all they, and we, know. Can they reproduce? Will they survive an obviously mega-hostile world? There are no real answers in this story. It starts and it ends.
The one great thing it has going for it is the cast. The voices are Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, Elijah Wood, and several others.
It’s rated PG-13. I recommend it for Burton fans and precocious kids. Not for very young, or overly-sensitive children. People who go to movies for entertainment value only need not bother.