Shane Acker's "9" review

[Anayo]

Liked:

- Very original and creepy art style. Animated films tend to be really formulaic and lookalike nowadays, but 9 is very different and unique. The monsters in this film are truly bone chilling and the general scenario is scary.
- Breathtaking action scenes, with dynamic camera angles and agile characters. The animation and visuals look really good even though this was supposedly a lower budget animation.

Disliked:

- Shallow, poorly developed characters.
- A plot with lots of problems and things that don't make sense.


9 is every bit as fascinatingly creepy as the trailers made it look. But the problem lies with the story, not the animation or art style. I know it's unfair to compare to Pixar, but Pixar always develops their characters very strongly so you know who they are and care about them. 9 fails to do this. The main character, a robot named 9, is basically "born" in the first scene of the movie (or activated or whatever), with no prior memories of life or understanding of the world around him, then immediately thereafter he starts being really assertive and trying to lead other characters. It's kind of random. Later he meets another robot named 2, a kindly older fellow who briefly helps him out, then 2 gets kidnapped and 9 is really emotional and desperate about going to save him. The problem is that 2 is shown so briefly he's still kind of stranger, but 9 acts bewilderingly heartbroken like his dad just got abducted or something. The movie's most pathetic part is when the other characters find out that a robot leader named 1 was responsible for putting 2 in a dangerous situation with the hopes that he'd get kidnapped - in other words, there was foul play involved in 2's death. But no one treats 1 like a murderer. They just briefly get mad at him then go on with their lives, and even treat 1 like they're still on friendly terms with him in later scenes.

I could go on for paragraphs like this, but I won't. Bottom line is, the movie just wasn't well written. They should have spent more time with the script before they moved on to modeling, animating, and rendering everything. This saddens me, cause 9 had the setting and premise to make for a really awesome movie, but the weak characters and wonky story kept it from being this. I don't recommend seeing it unless you're in the mood for brainlessly pretty CG effects.

[BigTinz]

That movie was the biggest let down of 09 for me.

[(-_-)]

I watched the short film and thought it was incredible. The movie wasn't even a letdown becuase I didn't see it being successful before it was released. They ruined the characters by making them generic stereotypes. I found the world they were creating kind of interesting, but it really wasn't necessary. Elijah woods was also very irritating as was the character of 9 in general. The movie lost the point of the short film. The mystery and atmosphere was ruined when everyone started talking and they had the whole world explained. Very sad.