Nine

Director: Rob Marshall
Writers: Michael Tolkin, Anthony Minghella
Starring: Daniel Day Lewis, Marion Cottillard, Judi Dench
Release Date: December 25, 2009
Length: 1 hour 58 minutes

It seems as though almost every December, there is a musical that comes out to compete in the Oscar race and this year Nine really seemed like the one. With an all-star cast, an amazing director, and a crappy script Nine fell straight to the bottom of the Oscar competitors. Based on; the Tony award winning musical, Nine is about Italian director Guido Contini (Daniel Day Lewis) and the many women in his life. His wife (Marion Cottilard), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his muse (Nicole Kidman), his costume designer (Judi Dench), his mother (Sophia Loren), a reporter (Kate Hudson), and a prostitute (Fergie) all play an important key in Guido’s so fascinating life. Here’s the part where I usually give the premise or backbone story of the movie. There’s not much to say because there is not much of a plot to this film. Every scene was basically each woman getting introduced to the movie, and then having there own musical number. Trying to squish 8 different storylines into one production may work in a 3-4 hour Broadway play but it certainly doesn’t in a 2-hour movie. Some characters ended up only having 10 minutes or less of screen time like Nicole Kidman and Fergie. The first couple of musical performances seemed cool with the way the director used different kinds of camerawork, from normal colours to black and white. However, soon the audience realized that all of the musical performances had the same cool effects and the songs started to seem visually repetitive. You can always tell when you watch a Daniel Day Lewis movie that he fully dives into the character he is portraying. If you watched one of his films after the other you probably wouldn’t be able to tell that it’s the same actor. That’s not just because his characters usually look quite different from each other, but they all are complete individuals from anyone else. However, I felt that Lewis was a bit over the top in his Italian, aging, conflicted character. Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed Fergie’s five-minute performance (including her song) more than any other woman’s performance in this film. Not only does she have a knock out voice, but her presence on screen was also unquestionable. Penelope Cruz delivered well, as she always does. I am a big fan of Penelope Cruz, but I have to say I enjoyed her acting performance more than her singing one. I found myself actually quite enjoying Kate Hudson’s small part in this film, despite my not being her biggest fan. Marion Cottillard did not have a strong voice, but certainly held her ground as a strong character, Dame Judi Dench can never do wrong with her acting, and god bless Sophia Loren for still singing and dancing at her age. I loved each cast member in this movie, especially Daniel Day Lewis and Penelope Cruz. But by the end of the film, their great performances weren’t enough to save this project. In fact in my mind, their performances were weakened by the quality of the film itself. Nine was definitely too hyped up before it came out, and seemed to everybody like it would be an amazing film to go and see. How could you blame our naïve eyes, with an all star cast – 6 out of the 8 stars with Oscars -, directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago) and based off of a Tony award winning musical, Nine appeared to have it all. With all this excitement comes a load of disappointment, when you actually see the film, unfortunately.