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I guess it must be promising-trailer, disappointing-movie week or something like that. After Law Abiding Citizen 9 is another movie that doesn’t live up to its premise and its trailer. The movie is about a bunch of burlap dolls, 9 in total, who are the only remaining species together with machines after the machines successfully wiped out humanity in a war. So basically the movie is an animated version of Terminator/The Matrix with dolls. As corny as that might sound the movie does play it straight and the animation is rather finger-licking good.
Where it does go wrong is that the movie on a whole is a tad too abstract and the plot is uninvolving. How beautiful the movie may be it never sucks you in. The storyline is rather straight forward and apart from the main characters being burlap dolls the movie rips on several apocalyptic sci-fi classics. A war between man and machine? Been there, done that. A fascist government? It’s V for Vendetta or Equilibrium all over again.
The movie’s strength is that it’s really skillfully made. It looks beautiful, the actions scenes are spectacular. the color palette is easy on the eyes, the voice acting sufficient and a lot of creativity has been put in the design of the dolls and the machines. Those robots are truly frightening. I also liked the fact that everything is seen out of the perspective of a puppet which makes all the human tools and stuff gigantic in their hands. Honey, I srhunk the kids in an apocalyptic wasteland if you will, but it adds a charm.
9 is an entertaining movie, but in the end rather unsatisfying, There has been put a lot of effort in the look and feel of the movie and for a CG-animated movie it’s a breath of fresh air that it for once doesn’t feature talking animals who’s plastic equivalent you would get with a Happy Meal. Too bad it’s all the effort was done for a by the numbers plot.
