We review Tim Burton's interpretation of a short film masterpiece.
In 2005, director Shane Acker made a curiously impressive little film called 9. With a running time of 11 minutes, his Oscar-nominated short film showed he was a director to watch in the coming years. And now four years later, Acker is back, along with the help of producers Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Corpse Bride) and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted), with his feature length re-imagining of his short film coincidentally called 9.
9 stars the voice talents of Elijah Wood, John C. Reilley and Jennifer Connelly, just to name a few, as futuristic ragdolls in a post-apocalyptic nightmare of what seems to be the remnants of world war and nuclear fallout. 9 (voice by Wood), awakens in an abandoned room completely unaware of the world around him. As he starts to explore the ruins he realizes he may not be alone. 9 ends up meeting other numbered creatures like him and finds, like the extinct people of this world, their time may be running out.
Acker’s world is a beautiful mess. With a very heavy steampunk theme, the traversing landscape bellows with twisting iron and mountains of rubble. The atmosphere hangs like a stale fog haunting the desolate wasteland. With so many dark foreboding corners and abandoned structures, this universe dares you to go outside and explore. And the animation is top notch. The world and its creatures are full of rich texture and personality—a dark, lifeless, bleak personality.
The voice acting in the film is by no means bad, but it does suffer from its star power. Throughout the entire film, the characters never felt like themselves. Trying to surround yourself in the action of the film, while at the same time hearing Frodo and George McFly running from danger, makes it hard to stay in the moment and it took a lot out of the tone of the scenes. Having big names in a film is usually a good thing when you’re trying to sell it to a distributor, but it could have been a nice move to cast some lesser known voices for the roles.
While I was and still am a big fan of Acker’s original short, 9 is a bit of a letdown. The plot never really achieved what it was set up for. There is no big reveal, no real closure to the story. In the end there really is no end. And with its miniscule 79-minute runtime (70 without the credits), the structure felt very forced. Everything seems to happen in 10 minute increments: fight machines, walk a little, fight machines, walk a little more. This movie was a chance to take the incredible premise of the short film and turn it into a great story. It ended up just feeling like a longer version of the original.
Also a quick note to parents: this is not a children’s film. My screening was full of kids and by the end there were some parents already on damage control. The PG-13 rating is for “violence and scary images." So unless your kids don’t mind having killing machines jump out at them from dark corners of the room, I’d leave this movie for the older ones.
