9

It was purely because of aesthetics that I expected this to be the kind of film I really enjoyed. A grim post-apocalyptic cgi movie featuring a cast of little homunculi made from burlap sacks? Seemed great to me.

Which is why I ought not to be all that surprised that I was disappointed by poor plotting and weak characterisation. Save perhaps some sequences with human characters who try to leap the Uncanny Valley by being exaggerated caricatures, only looking incongruous and false, the film is stunning to look at. Machines and little creatures and especially landscapes largely destroyed by warfare and lit in gorgeous half-light look incredible.

But the story is just too thin, too functional, too grounded in boardroom approval. Our little sacking heroes are cute, but their characters are derived from stock and fit roles without ever actually becoming interesting, in spite of spirited performances by Elijah Wood and Christopher Plummer. The actual narrative is a mess of coincidence, unexplained robotic functions that really make no sense within the setting and horrible exposition- and motivation-spewing talking heads who just happen to know the right thing to do without it really being explained why. The final scenes are emotionally manipulative and the closing contrivances are there really so that we can excuse the fact that actually, 9 himself did absolutely nothing good, creating a problem for no reason and then solving it at huge cost to the others.

Really, 9 should have been taken to task far more for what he did, and the characters’ reactions to what happened because of him were never even close to appropriate, including 1’s sniping little reprimands.

A fascinating setting and intriguing premise, but ultimately let down by poor execution and lack of human emotion.

(originally written 29.10.09)