9

“Seems we had such potential… but we squandered our gifts,” laments the narrator. A sewn puppet-like body drops from a machine whose purpose is not yet evident, except to anyone who may have seen writer/director Shane Acker’s 2005 film short upon which this movie expands.

9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) finds himself anew to the world—no recollection of a past or an identity, oddly possessed by a curiosity which doesn’t stop to suppose how he seems to know exactly what to be curious about. Earth is desolate, ravaged by war without a soul- err, human, around. A sign reads “REVOLT” in an angular, politburo style. Humanity was betrayed by machines built by a scientist who created the first sentient defense system. It’s an old, lumbering premise, heaped upon the rucksack of a tighter idea in Acker’s original.

In his search to discover what’s taken place and how he came to be here, 9 finds others like him, including the gregarious 2 (Martin Landau), the friendly 5 (John C. Reilly), the oafish 8 (Fred Tatasciore), the arcane 1 (Christopher Plummer, as curmudgeonly as ever), and the lucky 7 (Jennifer Connelly). A fair amount of detail is put into the look and feel of the film—falling ashes from a building set ablaze, the crick in the corner of 1’s mouth and his octagonal gaze. Also intriguing is the flickering of their lens-shaped eyes when twins, 3 and 4, catalogue, share and replay memories. 8 keeps himself entertained on lookout duty with a magnet that induces an electro-opiate haze—white noise saturating his apertures.

But what of the story? The narrative doesn’t occupy more space than that of the original short film. Instead, it’s beset by action sequences and exuberant but shallow characterizations. Ms. Connelly’s 7, in a phoned-in performance, flips, leaps and runs around but is given little else to do. In the original, no characters spoke, avoiding the complication of gender identity in puppets that have no sexual function. Undoubtedly, studio execs must have thought it necessary to inject a female into the equation for 9 to have a girl, but why? It never develops beyond a basic fondness that could just as easily be expressed without gender, or voices for that matter. There’s more chemistry between 5 and 9—odd indeed. And there’s the rub. The voices do little to enhance the story. Mostly, the dialogue informs us of events easily inferred from the visuals. “When we awoke in this world it was chaos,” says 1, accompanied by images of war! “Why would it bring him here,” is a thought that appears obvious from the character’s facial expressions.

Entirely superfluous conversations and thoughts hinder what could have otherwise been a beautiful, somber existentialist film about a number of potential themes—loss, survival, consciousness. These tiny, soft cloth-stitched beings (fairly obvious spoilers ahead), possessed of a human soul lacking in their creepy, mechanical enemies, have all the emotional states of their human source but are absymally blind to their origins, even when seen in a schematic right in front of them. Only the theatrical requirement of running time seems to keep them from figuring this piece out.

The film and the short remind me of the potent 1999 short by Marc Osborne, “More,” in which the nameless protagonist, occupying a world of grey skyscrapers and monotonous assembly lines managed by tyrants, strives to recreate the wonder of his childhood only to turn it into a blockbuster product. He becomes the soulless mogul he despises. It is a much more haunting end than is shown here. Mind you, this film’s end was faithful to the short, but it seems purposeless and anticlimactic for a feature-length narrative, in part due to the deafening action sequences spliced into the original story, drowning out the impact of the conclusion. What results is a film that began with a human, and morphed into a soulless machine, devoid of emotion or philosophical depth. The opening narration is more self-aware than Shane Acker perhaps intended.

9 • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 • Running Time: 79 Minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and scary images • Distributed by Focus Features