Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

I've spoken to enough directors over the last 11 years or so to know that scraping together a handful of short films and getting them shown at festivals has been the path that many successful filmmakers have taken to land them their first feature film job. About five years ago, I saw a wonder live-action short called CASHBACK, from writer-director Sean Ellis. About two years following the short's acclaimed journey through the festival circuit, Ellis took his short and made it the centerpiece of a feature-length work of the same name that garnered a great deal of acclaim from most critics who saw it (including me). Ellis has since directed another feature, but continues making shorts as well. In 2005, writer-director-student Shane Acker developed a groundbreaking and much talked about animated short called 9, which showed up in animation and other film festivals. It caught the attention of Tim Burton and others who were eager to work with Acker and add him to the growing list of directing greats in the animation universe. The result of this process is a feature-length version of 9 that does not feature material from the short, although it certainly does take place with the same lead character in the same post-apocalyptic world. It's actually kind of rare that a first-time director will get to make an enhanced version of their own short as their premiere movie, but both Ellis and Acker are the worthy exceptions to the standard operating procedure.

If you're a fan of eye-popping, dark, and slightly terrifying animated works, 9 should scratch that itch. The trouble comes with what I deem to be a fairly unoriginal story about a group of humanoid creatures (they look like ragdolls built with bits of metal weaved into their cloth bodies) that are simply going from place to place searching for clues about their origin, about what happened to the human population in this now machine-run world, and how they can stop from getting killed by the machines before they figure out how to defeat them. This is the kind of adventure story that parcels out bits of plot detail only when the story dictates they are necessary and not from any kind of insight or cleverness on the part of any particular character. And considering how stunning the look of the film is and the smart general concept behind 9, the fact that the execution is so ordinary is a substantial disappointment.

One of the things I loved so much about the short was that there was no spoken dialogue, an element I wish could have been transferred to the feature. The short made the audience think and pay attention and look for hints concerning the world in which the character 9 exists. I've got nothing against any of the voice actors in the feature; quite the contrary. Any film featuring Elijah Wood (who plays the title character), Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer, and Crispin Glover will get no push back from me on casting choices. The problem originates with the screenplay from Pamela Pettler (CORPSE BRIDE; MONSTER HOUSE), which spends way too much time in exposition mode and not enough time simply wowing us with character development or even a surprise or two on this journey.

I did like the way each clothed avenger was differentiated. Reilly's 5 is missing an eye, so a folded cloth has been sewn over the socket. Glover's mentally ill 6 has pens for fingers and communicates largely through drawings. Connelly's action-hero 7 looks like she's made out of a smoother, sleeker material. And how great is it that Plummer and Landau are both in the movie at all, rather then have some younger actors come in and perform the characters (1 and 2) using old-man voices. In no way can I fault Acker's vision. He has created a world that isn't exactly ours, but it's close enough to be recognizable as a post-industrial age gone horribly wrong. The machines don't look slick and modern at all; they are noisy, clumsy, and ugly, but every inch of them appears able to cut or crush you. An OSHA inspector would have a field day in this environment.

I'm truly torn on 9, because there is much to like here. But considering it's only 79 minutes long with credits, and I was getting bored at about the 30-minute mark, that isn't a good sign. Perhaps if I'd watched the film with the sound turned off, I might have seen it as a masterpiece. What I got instead was a tired plot brought to life by some of the coolest visuals you'll likely see this year. With exceptional voice work spouting out cliché dialogue and practically reading us the handbook on how to execute an adventure, 9 is a troubled movie that is playing it safe in one area of its production, while going for broke down in the best possible dark and dangerous way on many other levels. I'm edging toward recommending it primarily because I want to encourage people to support adult-oriented animation and not simply look at the medium as a place safe for families to go on the weekend. 9 is not for small children, but I'm guessing that pre-teens might get a lot more out of this film than I did only because they haven't seen it 100 times before. The look of the film is simply too good for me to dismiss it entirely, but if you loved the short as much as I did, you may be disappointed.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
Follow Me On Twitter