9

9 is a stunningly gorgeous looking film that’s an art-house minded action adventure. It mostly succeeds in its goal to mix the two of them together and create something new and fun. I love any animated film that proves that the entire genre isn’t chock full of cuddly anthropomorphic creatures, pretty princesses and handsome princes. These little rag dolls look like something out of a cyberpunk vision, the cityscape is disturbingly quiet and accurate to real life images of post-war cities, the less said about the mechanical monsters the better – one of them even freaked me out.

Yes, at times the movie hits too close to brainless popcorn action, but with such intriguingly disturbing images and a new enough screenplay, it remains as far away from “generic” and “safe” as possible. I’ve seen a lot of strange science-fiction films, a lot of strange animated films, but I’ve never seen an animated science-fiction film where the (dead) mad scientist is literally the hero and the enemy. This premise – about dividing the soul and placing it in different creations in order to recreate and bring new life to the dead world – can overcome any of dialogue problems – lots of action movie cliché lines, but the astounding visuals are the real reason to see the film.

The stitched together dolls are quirky and fun to look at, each looking similar but very different from each other. It helps that you can see an improved design with each new doll. My favorites were the silent twins who communicated with a form of Morse code involving blinking and flashing their eyes. But the odds-and-ends robotic demons from Hell are even more impressive. The first monster looking like a mechanical exoskeleton for a large feral cat or a prehistoric dog, another looking like a pterodactyl, another looking like a baby-doll/snake hybrid (creepiest one, by far).

If any of this sounds even remotely interesting I suggest that you see 9. It’s not a perfect animated film, but this film, Up, Ponyo and Coraline are the best animated films I’ve seen all year. Hopefully at this year’s Academy Awards the Best Animated film ghetto the nominees will go up from three to five. It’s happened once before, and this year it needs to happen again.