Nerd Mentality

MOVIE REVIEW - 9

Posted September 8th 2009 by Batist Tardiou.

Very few animated films are targeted to a more mature audience. This isn't your typical Pixar film that can be viewed by an entire family, this is a film that takes you into the depth of a Matrix-like apocalypse world where humans and robots fought an all out war against each other until both sides were exterminated.

The story is about 9, a newly created doll-like person thinking he has no purpose. 9 awakes in a world completely dead and destroyed and he doesn't know what to do. He discovers the worlds' dark secret and meets other doll-like persons, each with a different number. Friction starts between several numbers because one side is too afraid to face against the few machines remaining and prefers to keep hiding until all the machines perish, while the other wants to go and save the captured numbers.

Each number has a role in the small society they constructed while they are waiting for the machines to die out, and different personalities. But sadly the society and the roles they held was not very well used and we see little of each characters except 9 whom holds the lead role. In this short movie it's almost impossible to get attached to secondary characters, which is a huge factor in most 3D movies where you can get easily attached to secondary characters (Kevin and Dug in Up! EVE and the Captain in Wall-E, Donkey and Puss in Shrek, and I can go on...) Most of the characters barely had any major role in the movie which is really sad because when you get introduced to some of them you go "wow, what a cool looking design". 8 for example is a giant mean looking Number but in some scenes you can clearly see he has a really good side to him, but when the movie ends, you realise that we didn't get to see much of that. The machines on the other hand were designed to look very scary and each have an "animal" design". The designs are actually really cool and you can see much was put into them to strike fear into the audience. They look and act like wild animals that were brainwashed by the "brain", the main protagonist of this film.

The animation in the movie is superb. There's barely any flaw in it, the characters move realistically and the world really feels alive (despite being completely dead from "life"). The design of the world is also splendid with original landscape from the eyes of very tiny people and beautiful lighting in a cloudy world.

The story isn't very deep. It gets straight to the point quickly, and leaves a few plot holes open for sequels to be made. The story is; 5 gets captured, 9 wants to rescue 5, other numbers are too scared but are eventually influenced 9, they go and try rescue and eventually defeat the "brain". Not very deep and extremely simple. The movie becomes predictable very quickly, at the beginning when 5 gets captured. At that point you can pretty much guess what will happen next and no surprises show up to completely blow you away.

The problem with the film is being way to simple for an adult, and way to dark for younger children. Despite the talent of the director in giving us gorgeous scenes after scenes, everything is expected and not very passionate. A great looking film that is missing it's soul.

Here's the original short movie by Shane Acker. The short is basically the beginning of the movie, although there are key differences including the ending and some of the characters. But fear not, the movie has voice acting, the animation is much more fluid and it is an all around better looking film. Key word "better looking" because unlike this short film which showed soul and spice, the movie is just a stretched out version of this short film and loses some of it's spice and intrigue.

Tags: 9

Posted in: Reviews, Entertainment

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