9 (2009)

  This is the inaugural post of the "Rob" tag.  Let's hear a round of applause.

...

Ok, that's enough.  Rob, aka New Boyfriend (you know I must like him since he gets a real name and everything), has graciously given me access to his movie collection which rivals mine in size, at least digitally.  He was also very understanding about my insistence in alphabetizing his DVDs and Blu-rays. What?  It's a disease, I can't help it.

Anyway, this was the first one on the shelf that I hadn't seen before so I borrowed it.

Frankly, I expected more.  Don't get me wrong here, the animation is frankly spectacular especially in Blu-ray.  It practically pops off the screen.  Sadly, the story just isn't compelling:  9 is the last of a series of little burlap and clockwork creations made by a scientist after the future Sarah Connor warned us about comes true and man has been destroyed by machines.  By the time 9 wakes up, there are only the other eight and The Beast, a machine with a cat's skull that is looking for a particular device.

9 has the device and after embarking on a mission to rescue 2 from The Beast, he inadvertently activates The Brain, a machine capable of replicating other machines by stealing life force from other creatures.  Since the numbered ones are the only living creatures left, you can see where this is going.  9 has to rally his siblings and figure out how to stop it.

Now, a movie like this hinges on the characters and it's just really hard to care about these little things.  They don't even have names, just numbers, and as Jean Valjean or Magneto can tell you, numbers dehumanize.  Also, they don't bleed and whatever injuries they sustain can be fixed with needles and thread, making it harder to care about whether they get hurt or not.

I'm a big fan of Tim Burton and I like Timur Bekmambetov's Russian work (though I hated Wanted with a passion) so I was very disappointed in this movie.