Review of Nine (2009) by Jordan W — 28 Sep 2010

The main issue that I have with Rob Marshall's Nine is that there really seems to be no heart and soul in it. The story is there, but nothing is really done with it. Stars enter and exit, and there is never really any feeling in the characters, nor is there a single memorable song throughout the entire movie, aside from Fergie's "Be Italian," which is actually kind of cool. The music and the songs are very bland and generic, and take away rather than add to the story and to the drama. Everytime song would begin, I would sigh in discomfort because I knew that the drama was going to be interrupted.

Daniel Day-Lewis is Guido Contini, a distinguished Italian film-director who has most recently released three flops, which seem to overshadow his previously applauded films earlier on in his career. The story deals with his struggles involving a new movie script, and with the many women in his life. He is asked early on at a press conference if he is out of ideas, a question which he puzzles and chews over throughout the duration of the movie. He is constantly hassled about the next script, but sees no reason why it is anybody's business, including his own.

The women in Guido's life are introduced as follows: his shy, modest wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard), his fiery mistress, Carla (Penelope Cruz), his costumes mistress Lilli (Judi Dench), his mamma (Sophia Loren), his muse, actress Claudia (Nicole Kidman), a reporter (Kate Hudson), and Saraghina, a mysterious woman from his childhood (Fergie). Of these actresses, Dench stands out the most as the sharp, pragmatic assistant, and each scene she shares with Day-Lewis is a delight. How could any scene shared by these two actors be anything less? I also enjoyed Loren's presence here, and to see a legend along side a legend is remarkable.

Cotillard does some fine work here as well, but she, like most everyone else besides Dench and Day-Lewis, never develops as much as she should. I don't see how this production could have worked well on stage, because the parts of the movie that I most enjoyed were between the songs, and even these scenes often became a bore. Nicole Kidman's part in particular is very slow and underdeveloped. This is the root of the problem: underdeveloped characters in an underdeveloped story stuffed with forgettable songs that don't mesh well into the film as a whole. They feel sloppily attached with duct tape, while the actors scurry around, dancing and/or singing. There are some beautifully filmed sequences in black and white, involving Fergie's character, and I admired the potential. Unfortunately, this potential is never quite reached in any other way.

So underwhelming is the overall production, that about an hour in, I was squirming in my seat waiting for the end credits. Even the terrific performances of Day-Lewis and Dench couldn't manage to save this movie, and although I haven't yet seen Frederico Fellini's original movie 8 1/2, which the Broadway show Nine is based off of, I have a strong feeling that this adaptation of the stage adaptation of Fellini's acclaimed work has lost one or many important elements in translation. Everything that worked so well in Rob Marshall's Chicago is absent here, and the choppy, uneven, and disorganized Nine is a major musical misfire. (Pardon the alliteration).