Starring: Animation with voices of Christopher Plummer, Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly
Directed by Shane Acker
Rating: **
Based on Shane Acker’s own similarly titled short film of 2005, 9 comes riding on the big hype of getting released simultaneously across the world (including India) this Wednesday, on the portentous 09-09-09. It also comes with the quality stamp of co-producer Tim Burton known for backing intelligent, thoughtful and provocative projects. However, the film, despite treading a new course, manages to impress only partially.
The atmosphere is far from the sunshine world of Disney. It’s a dark, oppressive landscape, ruins of a post-war world, that Starz Animation of Canada brings alive in a stylised fashion. Inhabiting this gloomy, bombed-out terrain are some rag doll-like creatures. They don’t have names but only numbers and are trying to fend off machines that have wiped out the humans from the earth. The all zipped-up number 9 is our hero who will eventually save and inherit the world with the help of his compatriots and a talisman. Despite being ‘cartoons’ each of the rag dolls is quite well-defined—1 is the domineering leader who refuses to trust easily, 3 and 4 are cute twins who can’t speak and 7 is like a warrior princess with her prominent bird shell helmet. In a nutshell, the film unfolds like a fight for survival. It is structured as a series of endless encounters of the rag dolls with the mechanised beasts. Before one ends, another begins. They are thrilling to start with but get repetitive and boring. They do make way for a bit of fun like the emotional rising of rag doll ghosts in the end and even some cute romance between 9 and 7. But these are just little pockets of fresh air in a suffocating scenario.
The theme—the world is what we make of it—is dealt with in a safe, simple and obvious way. How man digs his own grave, how the oppressive state forces a good scientist to build a Frankenstein-like machine which goes out of control, how an instrument of progress can get wrongly used as a weapon of mass destruction, how a leader may not always be correct, how the old and weak get sacrificed for the larger good of the community—the film offers the viewers all these significant thoughts but stops short of reflecting on them with insight or intensity.
High Fives
Bollywood
1. Kaminey
2. Life Partner
3. Aagey se Right
4. Daddy Cool
5. Fox
Hollywood
1. The Final Destination
2. Inglourious Basterds
3. All About Steve
4. Gamer
5. District 9
Ringtone
1. Best I Ever Had (Drake)
2. Big Green Tractor (Jason Aldean)
3. Obsessed (Mariah Carey)
4. Down (Jay Sean)
5. Break up (Mario)
Courtesy: Film Information
