Just because it looks like nothing else doesn't mean you haven't seen it all before.
Take 9: Visually rousing but derivative to a fault, this eerie animated parable repurposes so many sci-fi themes and locales -- whether it's the spooky, sooty post-apocalyptic setting or the hero's journey the protagonist embarks upon -- that even swaddled in dazzle, it can't help but feel frustratingly familiar.
Style or substance?
Which you prefer will likely determine your enjoyment and appreciation of the film.
We're first introduced to 9 -- a pint-sized, tweed rag doll with weirdly expressive lenses for eyes and Elijah Wood's voice -- as he awakens surrounded by blasted-out buildings and scorched ruins.
Seems once again in a movie technology has run amok and extinguished biological life.
With no idea who he is or why he was created, 9 wanders the wrecked wasteland of rubble, stalked by marauding machines, and eventually encounters members of his own species.
Each has a personality as distinctive as their numbering.
There's No. 1 (Christopher Plummer), a puppet-as-pontiff who warns against venturing outside their bunker, and No. 5 (John C. Reilly) who quickly becomes a friend.
Others include fiery spirited No. 7 (Jennifer Connelly), artistic No. 6 (Crispin Glover), mute Nos. 3 and 4, heavy-set No. 8 (Fred Tatasciore) and frail No. 2 (Martin Landau).
Of course, it's up to 9 -- the most adventurous and capable of the group -- to lead them out into the hostile realm beyond their hidden borders so they can fulfill their destinies.
Darker and more frightening than Pixar's Wall-E, which generated humour, warmth and romance amid the ruins of post-human life, 9, by contrast, places its heroes in near-constant peril.
Lives are lost, rescues are last-minute and throughout they're hunted by "The Beast" -- a giant robotic spider that literally sucks the spirit out of its victim.
It's brutal and breathlessly paced -- no doubt because, even though 9 is director Shane Acker's feature adaptation of his own 11-minute short film, it still clocks in at a scant 79 minutes.
That earlier movie -- which was Acker's thesis at UCLA's animation department -- went on to win accolades and attention, as well as an Oscar nomination in 2005.
Among its admirers were Hollywood heavyweights Tim Burton and Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, who are credited as 9's producers.
And, no question, the world Acker conjures is a knockout -- a stunning macabre mosaic that owes as much to Victorian-era "steampunk" as the cataclysmic visions of The Road Warrior or I Am Legend.
Still, if only some of the ambition evident in the imagery had been applied to a screenplay that is too predictable to resonate, too formulaic to genuinely surprise.
Ultimately, 9 feels less a seamless example of storytelling than, like its cloth-covered characters, a somewhat frayed patchwork.
(This film is rated PG)
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