Director Shane Acker’s 9 is a stunning thing to look at, and for that reason alone the animated film deserves attention from sci-fi fans itching for a fresh take on post-apocalyptic nightmares.
In this feature debut based on his 11-minute student film, Acker presents a David-versus-Goliath story set in a profoundly polluted world ruled by clanking, insectoid robots.
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A feisty crew of nine sentient rag dolls fight the good fight in the visually dazzling PG-13 film, which opens Wednesday. The “stitchpunk” dolls are created, Pinocchio-style, by a reclusive genius who patches them together out of burlap, buttons, zippers and scraps before sending them into the ruined world, one by one, as tiny embodiments of humanity’s last, best hope.
The dynamic dolls — voiced by Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau and Fred Tatasciore — don’t have much in the way of back story to work with. Still, the actors inject their characters with enough personality to distinguish one from the next.
But it’s the animation, not the acting, that separates 9 from the pack.
Acker and his team at Toronto’s Starz Animation paint a convincing picture detailing a future world stripped of organic life forms. In place of snow, gray ash floats to the ground. The sky takes on a glum palette ranging from bruised purple to rust red. Industrial Age robot factories belch smoke, operating on orders from an anonymous machine intelligence. The 10-inch-tall rag dolls wander through scorched ruins, foraging for detritus from which to make their weaponry.
Number 2, a frail inventor/mechanic, is voiced by Martin Landau.
Images courtesy Focus FeaturesAcker has cited stop-motion animators Jan Švankmajer, the Brothers Quay and the Lauenstein Brothers as influences.
While grim sci-fi is nothing new, Acker’s movie lies closer to the dark aesthetic of The Nightmare Before Christmas (crafted by Tim Burton, one of 9‘s producers) than Wall-E, which put a candy-colored comedic spin on a similarly dire robots-amid-ruins premise. Despite the film’s foreboding atmosphere, 9 downplays graphic violence, which should make this fantasy a palatable viewing experience for older kids.
Influences aside, Acker and his animators demonstrate an especially clever knack for meshing old-school mechanical gadgetry with oddball behavior. Mute twin rag dolls, for example, function as repositories of human culture by projecting grainy black-and-white newsreel footage through their eyes as if they were mid-century film projectors.
For all its visual splendor, 9 probably won’t win any trophies in the dialogue department. The earnest script efficiently moves characters to their appointed places but fails to deliver much in the way of wit or memorable profundity. And in place of a well-spoken, badass antagonist, 9 relies on a depersonalized army of inarticulate bot-beasts to provide dramatic conflict.
9 may not score a perfect 10, but Acker delivers an original end-of-the-world vision destined to give burlap a good name.
WIRED Bleak, brilliant stitchpunk visuals excite the senses.
TIRED Absence of a strong villain drains the drama.
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