Tim Burton’s 9 – Guest Review

The movie 9 is a post-apocalyptic film about a group of nine figurines who are brought to life by a mad scientist in hopes to stop the machine from continuing to destroy the earth.  Each of the characters are given different traits and personalities, and as such, are voice-acted by Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, and Crispin Glover.

9 was the one film I was looking forward to the most this season, you can chalk that up to the brilliant marketing team who created the teaser trailer. When the song “Welcome Home” by Coheed and Cambria started to play I was hooked and pumped up for the movie. Playing “Welcome Home” during the teaser trailer made the movie seem badass, but in truth, it didn’t live up to the expectations the trailer had portrayed. At times the movie was loud and explosive and then for no apparent reason, switched to happy-go-lucky. I also found the soundtrack to be quite good, except for when it was overtaken by those loud explosions and action noises.

The first 15 minutes of the film reminded me of a silent film, or at least a film where none of the characters spoke, but there was still cool sound effects and music playing in the background. Shortly after, you’re introduced to the other characters and that’s when the movie becomes a disappointment. Listening to John C. Reilly’s voice as #5 was annoying, so much so that I thought his character was a joke. I was hoping that at some point in the movie the real voiceover actor would come out and take John C. Reilly’s place as #5.

Besides John C. Reilly’s bad voiceover work I did find some of the other voiceovers to be befitting of the characters chosen for them such as, Elijah Wood as #9 and Jennifer Connelly as #7. The biggest flaw of the movie comes from the spotty story line (which was as spotty as a bad makeup job); I found that some parts of the film seemed to be written specifically to piss off the audience. I’m glad it was only 80 minutes long, any longer and the film would have been too much to comprehend and less enjoyable than it already was.

In contrast to the issues with the John C. Reilly VO work and story line issues, the movie visually looked amazing. The animation work done by Matthew Teevan was beautiful in its own right. Some of most effective animation work was during the fight scenes between the figurines and the machines. It was very entertaining to watch the main evil machine create other smaller machines out of scraps of metal and random skeletons laying about.

It’s unfortunate that this film didn’t become what it should have been, a great movie. I blame the trailer for setting a high level of expectation.  Either tease the audience with only a hint of what’s to come or don’t show a trailer at all.  I cringe thinking about how “awesome” Where The Wild Things Are looks in trailer form, and am psyching myself up for a let-down – sort of like taking Zinc to prevent from the full affects of a cold.

I would not recommend people seek this movie out until it comes out on DVD or Blu-ray, the average moviegoer is better off saving their money for a better film.

-Delia Hohenthaner
@deliahohen on twitter
About Delia

I’m a movie lover and appreciate a good film. I co-host a movie review podcast called “Minutes After Watching Movie Review” as well as a blog hosted on the same site.  You can find it at www.MinutesAfterMidnight.com

2 Responses to “Tim Burton’s 9 – Guest Review”

1. Nakita says:

   05/11/2009 at 4:40 pm

   My family is really excited for the movie to come out on DVD. We missed the showing in Theaters, really bummed us out. When does it come out on DVD??

2. Finley Mitchell says:

   20/05/2010 at 11:40 am

   Tim Burton has a unique style when making his movie. I love Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands.’*”