Review of Nine (2009) by Kenneth L — 05 Jan 2011

This movie has a bad case of being all dressed up and having nowhere to go. It has great cinematography and a half-dozen major stars, and no idea what to do with any of them. It's based on a Broadway play which in turn was based on the classic Italian film 8 1/2 (about which I recently wrote part of a paper), but it is nowhere near as good as 8 1/2. This movie feels like its writers read a plot summary of 8 1/2 on Wikipedia, saw some still images from it, and were then assigned to shoehorn in some generic Broadway songs into what story they could assemble from the summary and the pictures.

It has a huge cast of mostly excellent actors, but they're all either miscast or given little to do. Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the great actors of our day, but he is in the wrong role here. He is great at playing characters who externalize magnificently, who are loud and ferocious and domineering. Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York, Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood, even the crippled Christie Brown from My Left Foot: these are all men who tenaciously impose themselves on the world around them. Guido is the exact opposite of that: he internalizes his worries and frustrations and loses control of what's going on around him. Day-Lewis is not that great at that sort of thing, especially when the movie won't give him time to do it. You would need someone more like Colin Firth for this kind of role. Day-Lewis is great, but this just isn't the movie for him. He feels hemmed in here.

The large female cast basically get the revolving door treatment, as they all come on for a big scene and a song, and then leave again. Marion Cotillard, who gets two songs, fares the best as his wife, though she still doesn't get that much to do. The fact that Penelope Cruz got an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress just goes to show how shallow the field is for supporting roles for women; I mean, she's fine, but the role hardly requires a lot from her. This movie does get an extra half-star for giving Judi Dench a musical number; but that half-star is immediately taken away again for featuring Kate Hudson at all. Have I mentioned how much I hate Kate Hudson? I think she has no talent, and she always looks like the winner of a beauty pageant held in a Wal-mart in central Alabama. God she's awful. Sophia Loren shows up but is given little to do as his mother; ditto for Nicole Kidman. Much to my surprise, the best song actually comes from Fergie, of all people. Go figure.

The songs are mostly very generic; they sound like they could be from any Broadway show at all. Even worse, they are almost completely divorced from the dramatic context of the plot (which, incidentally, I think I only understood because I am familiar with 8 1/2 - I can imagine anyone not familiar with the classic being utterly confused by this movie). For an example of a Broadway musical adaptation where the songs actually fit into and contribute to the plot, see Sweeney Todd. And why is it that Broadway movies always seem to have those stupid costumes with tons of sequins, high heels, feathers, long gloves, lace, etc.? I always think that sort of thing looks idiotic, and yet they always use them. They look like what people thought was sexy at a 1920s Berlin nightclub. And what's with the sets where you can see the ladders and lightbulbs hanging around? It feels like you forgot to put some of the stuff out of sight of the cameras.

Just for sake of convenience, I'll compare it to True Grit, another re-do movie that I saw earlier today. True Grit was an example of a remake done right; it brought out strong elements that were obscured in the first version while getting rid of the weaknesses. John Wayne's True Grit needed the Coen brothers' True Grit. However, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 does not need Rob Marshall's Nine. It looks nice, but ultimately has nothing to say and nowhere much to go.