"9"

so, I watched this film with Jeremiah this morning.

it LOOKED nice. I enjoyed the character designs, which have oft been described as "stitch-punk", which I guess makes an allusion to "steam-punk" or something.

but the writing was sloppy-- only the most thread-bare attempt at describing how humanity was overthrown by machines was explained. that still does absolutely nothing to explain why all of the machines are based on animals and use an odd mixture of cloth, metal, and animal parts.

the plot, if there IS one, involved rediscovering a magical artifact that will solve everything. the characters are fairly one-dimensional-- although the acting was passably good for such thinly written characters.

it was hard to care about any of the characters. this story has been done over and over again a thousand times before-- and there's nothing to make this post-apocalyptic 'survivor' movie interesting apart from it's CGI animated aesthetics. the machine has no motivation at all, other than to erradicate everything that moves apart from itself. at least with "WALL-E" we could see that the movie's main antagonist was acting in accordance with its programming and directives. it wasn't trying to be an evil monster-- it was simply acting in the only logical way it could-- within it's limited pre-programmed understanding. I must follow orders, and my primary order is to keep everybody away from Earth.

"9" doesn't really have any of that. you can't call it a voyage of self-discovery--because the main character learns almost nothing about himself or the others. this movie should have been much better than it was-- but the ideas were so pedestrian that it needed to be rescued by great artwork and animation-- and it just wasn't that fantastic. not good enough to justify watching this movie ever again.

it was frustratingly dull in the same way that "Terminator Salvation" was dull-- this was like "Terminator Salvation" with half-stitched muppets. you'd think that "Terminator" meets Muppets would be awesome--but no such luck!

oh well, at least it was only a matinee price.