Review of 9, opening today (9/9/09)

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9 (Computer Animation)
Director: Shane Acker
Voices of: Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover

The reason that Pixar is the best at computer animated films is because they spend time and money on a script.  Others have come close (the Shrek films) but none has surpassed Pixar’s record of stories and characters we care about.  9 has neither.
A post-apocalyptic tale with hand-made cloth beings, each with a kind of mission, that come together to fight a kind of malignant intelligence which can create war machines as it needs to.  Naturally, the little critters manage to join to do battle with evil.  And that points to the purpose of the tale.
Of course, by that time, anyone more than 4 years old will ask if you can all go home to watch Wall*E on video.
The movie is nice visually, but derivative of so many other films, and with such a mediocre script, that it failed to interest me, and I am a very animation-friendly adult.  (Anybody know when the new Wallace and Gromit movie is coming out?)  I am also aware that kids aren’t as critical about story as adult movie reviewers, but this one just doesn’t fly.
C-