Nine Movie Review

Director Rob Marshall is an oddity of the directing world that is rather more difficult to figure than people might expect. With little to recommend him apart from choreography work and a variety of Broadway credits before going into Chicago, the popularity of that film gave him some degree of credibility. His Memoirs of a Geisha is actually a superior effort, though not as widely accessible. Now he brings us Nine , already of staggering positive reception. Apparently he will next be coming at us with the next Pirates of the Caribbean film. Go figure that.

But, somewhere along the road from Chicago to Nine, something has gone wrong. While I only found Chicago slightly above-average overall, there was a definite idea, direction, and purpose. It was the sort of thing you could hardly fault people for liking much more than I did. The musical numbers were sewn in quite well, the acting was solid, and the characters had purpose and a fair amount of soul.

With Nine, the actors seem mostly to be around to see how many cool names we can get in, and they are rather lifeless besides. Worse, the musical numbers only occasionally connect to anything, and even when they do it all seems forced and grandiose simply for the sake of being grandiose (not always something to note as a negative in a musical). There is some strange disconnect of flow to watching the film that felt a lot like going back to Marx Brothers movies wherein we would suddenly, and for no real reason, watch Chico play the piano for fifteen minutes.

Amid the musical spectacles, brief appearances by Sophia Loren so that you can say Sophia Loren is in your movie, and other semi-connected bits of fluff, there is a kind of story, but it's hard to care. Guido (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a filmmaker who apparently made a few brilliant movies, then made some bombs, and now he's working on another one. His first films were so good that he's incredibly famous and well-respected, but people find it hard to mention liking his films without throwing in, "well, you know, the early ones."

Now he finds himself fairly deep in production on his new movie, with costumes being created, test screenings under way, and countless people on the payroll, but he has no script and no idea for one. He's married, has a mistress, and has no idea what he's doing with any part of his life. We follow along as he pretends to have a movie, runs away from the press, has his affair, and generally drowns in the soulless egomaniac he is.

You want to be as open as you can when you're watching a musical, an entire genre based on the idea of the ludicrously silly being a lot of fun if done in the right way, but there is no joy or soul here. A couple of the musical numbers are actually quite good, but they are only as good as if you watched them independent from the film, because they don't really relate and can't draw from any investment you've made in the story.

There are small moments of interest and fun here and there, but it's hard to make it to them. There is somehow a kind of invented, false "prettiness" to the thing that most closely resembles the furthest reaches of avant garde art which finds superior-feeling people standing around moderately manipulated junk and ready-mades, and no one can find a way to say that the Emperor has no clothes.

Rating:  

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About Marc Eastman

Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.

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