9

On the 9th day of the ninth month of 2009, I saw a film that had nine characters, whose protagonist's name was nine, a movie in which there were nine heroes, and the film was called "9". What is the deal with all these 9's? I guess it's just marketing because there was nothing about it in the film. Anyways, director Shane Acker has given us a whole new realm of animation in his post-apocalyptic animated film, 9.

At the start of the movie, we see a scientist who is sowing together a stitchpunk(named by the director of the film) whom he named 9(voiced by Elijah Wood). Then quickly, before we see anything else, the scene flashes to when 9 wakes up and all human life has been dimolished. 9 then walks out into the broken world and soon finds another like him whose name is 2. "2" explains that the world has been taken over by machines and that the stitchpunks are the only things left to destroy them. Soon 9 finds the other 7 of his kind and embarks on his journey to finish the mission that the scientist created him to do.

Let me say that 9 isn't the film you want to take your young children to see. This movie is both dark and violent despite the fact that it's animated. The machines themselves are very menacing and frightening and they do their best to cut up, capture, and kill the stitchpunks and many times they succeed. While the film has no blood because they're all machines, there is still tons of violence and several deaths in which the stitchpunks get they're souls sucked out by machines.

What stunk for the film is that it's a little under an hour and a half so there isn't much time to explain the plot or get to know the characters. We get to see a little about each stitchpunk's personality but the movie doesn't have much time for that so it immediately gets going into the action. But, while the machines taking over the world isn't original, the fact that sown up rag dolls are trying to destroy them is and for that the makers of the film get brownie points.

The main accomplishment with "9" is that the film is visually amazing. The texture and detail that is seen in this film does a great job of throwing the viewer into the world of "9". No surprise there because almost everything with Tim Burton's name has great and unique animation. A few other things that added to my enjoyment of this film were the script and the music. I usually don't expect things like that to be in an animated film so I was pleasantly surprised.

"9" is an impressive film to watch but in the end...the plot just doesn't make sense. The stitchpunks were created in order to "protect" the future and keep civilization going but the things themselves have no reason to fight. So what if they do or don't destroy the machines, either way there will still be no humans when all is said and done. Why must the stitchpunks fight for a lost cause? That was the question that never got answered. However, "9" shown us a new kind of animated feature and had just enough spark to keep me interested till the end. 2 stars out of 4. "9" has a running time of 1 hour and 19 minutes and is rated PG-13 for violence and scary images.