released 01 feb 10 / last mod 01 feb 10 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the beginning of Shane Acker's computer-generated animated film 9, we see the character of the title -- a little android with a burlap-covered body and shuttered lenses for eyes, labeled with a "9" scribbled on his back (voiced by Elijah Wood) -- coming to life in a broken-down room. The world into which he has been born is a wasteland, with all life exterminated by an "apocalypse of the machines".
9 leaves the room to venture out into the devastated world, where he is attacked by monstrous machines of various descriptions and links up with a band of other little burlap androids more or less like him -- first meeting the eccentric 2 (Martin Landau), and then the rest of the group, including the timid 6 (Crispin Glover), the adventurous 7 (Jennifer Connelly), and the domineering but cowardly leader 1 (Christopher Plummer). While 1 has been determined to follow a timid path, 9 manages to encourage the band to seek out their mysterious origins and take on the tyranny of the machines.
* There's no need to say much more about the story than that, because there's not much more to say about it. This is a visually clever and well-produced movie, with considerable imagination expended on the creatures that prowl the darkened world after its end, but though it's a pretty package -- in a black and morbid sort of way -- there's not a lot inside. It looks like a short feature that was inflated to movie length, and in fact Acker started out originally with a short, which is included on the disk, that really delivers about as much as the full-length production.
I hate to pick on 9 too much, because it is worth the time to watch, but it never really makes the characters come alive -- admittedly hard to do with little burlap dolls -- and sometimes leaves the audience wondering what the characters are trying to do and why they think they need to do it. In the end, it ties up the weak story line with an unsatisfying knot of mystic mumbo-jumbo. One of the good points of Disney's somewhat uneven WALL-E was how it cleverly used the closing credits to show the resurrection of the ruined Earth, but Acker misses the opportunity to exit on a high note, instead leaving the audience hanging, wondering how a handful of little mechanical dolls are supposed to restore a completely lifeless planet.
Still, I must add that Acker has delivered an interesting half a loaf, and if he can get stronger scripts, he may well come up with something absolutely brilliant. Not at all bad for a first shot.
