Santikos Cine-opsis

“A stitch in time saves 9.” — some wordy seamstress

There are contradictions aplenty in “9″, the new post-apocalyptic CGI PG-13 children’s parable directed by Shane Acker and endorsed by Tim Burton and “Wanted” director Timur Bekmambetov.   “9′ is a computer animation film denouncing technology.  It’s heroes are machines…but the villains are machines, too.   Questioning authority is good, but science without soul leads to destruction.  These contradictions are the interwoven cloth that encapsulates 9, a puppet brought to life to save a world destroyed by a monster robot who brings other monster robots to life, which he accidentally brings to life while trying to save the life of another sock puppet who had saved his life previously.  It is then up to 9 to (make sense of and) fix his mistakes, and in so doing, fix the collective mistakes of all mankind.  That’s a lot to live up to for a googly-eyed voodoo doll that looks like a gingerbread man inside a potato sack haz-mat suit.

“9″ the movie plays out like a cross between “Wall-e”, “Edward Scissorhands”, and “The Matrix,” but since 3 references aren’t enough, let’s just go ahead and add “The Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, “Final Fantasy”, “The Seven Samurai”, “Toy Story”, and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (at least visually).  There.  Now we have 9 references for “9″.

And that’s one of the “9″’s problems. I think that the reason the film’s message gets so muddied is because “9″ started out as an Oscar-nominated short film, and was then expanded to feature length.  Now, I know that this is how many independent movies are made…first as shorts, then stretched into a full length later on to become more marketable.  Only in this case, much of the movie feels like filler…some sort of patchwork plot to link the action scenes together.

That being said, much of the original’s creativity makes it onto the big screen.  There are cute moments and endearing characters, cleverly created villains and wild action sequences.   The crazy robot snake-spider fight scene is one of my favorites, but nothing compares to watching one of the sock-robots sit on an empty tin can and giggle when he sticks a magnet up to his head, like some sort of EMP LSD.

It’s those scenes that make “9″ worth seeing, and its contradictions worth forgiving.  I believe that’s because, as we find out in the film, we put ourselves into our creations.  Maybe its fair then that this creation inherits both our good intentions and our hypocrisies.