Review of Nine (2009) by Simon M — 09 Aug 2010

This movie is based on the Broadway show of the same name which is based on the Federico Fellini movie 8 1/2. In that movie Marcello Mastrianni plays a Fellini-like character who is an incredibly creative director who is stuck. Fellini takes this character inot the surreal to examine the motives for the actions of the main character. In Nine, the main character, Guido Contini, is creatively blocked, but instead of going deep, it is all just glossed over and pretentiously tries to make us believe that it is all so important.

This is one incredibly lousy musical directed by Rob Marshall who rejuvinated the genre with Chicago(a better musical, but still far from great). The problem with this movie and Chicago(to a lesser extent) is that the character, story and the musical numbers are without much focus. Marshall seems more interested in creating a series of music videos while inserting dialogue and camera trickery in each performance. Insert this, music, insert that, music. This is more of a Broadway musical for the MTV crowd.

The main problem with this mess is Daniel Day-Lewis who plays Guido Contini. I loved him in There Will Be Blood, but in Nine he plays the part all wrong and just doesn't look the part. I think that beside Marshall's poor narrative skills and so-so musical numbers, all of it doesn't serve much purpose and Daniel Day-Lewis is what makes it crumble. Too bad they didn't get Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardam to play Guido, because there isn't a moment of truth in the Day-Lewis performance.

Another problem is with Nine itself. It isn't a very memorable Broadway musical and it doesn't even have one memorable song that anyone would recognize. Rob Marshall could have at least taken Fellini's style and used it to his advantage, but he instead filled the movie with eye candy glitz and sex. There is very little to care about here, because we never get a sense of the inner workings of any of the characters. The overabundance of characters squeezed into such a shallow script and what do you get? A whole lot of nothing!

Only a few movie musicals have actually gotten it right in the last 60 years. This is so far from right that it makes me wonder if the movie musical is dead once again. Oh, but there is the remake of Footloose and a movie version of Movin'Out coming soon. Footloose? Movin' Out? Yuck! Guess I no longer have to wonder about anything.