went to a screening of "Nine" today...

Wow! Thanks for that honest assessment/review... especially coming from someone with no prior knowledge of NINE, 8 1/2 or whatever.

Everyone familiar with any incarnation of the story is going with expectations. The worst thing they can do. This is a film adaptation. An adaptation -- not a carbon-copy recreation of any of the prior incarnations of the story.

Enjoy it for what it is. Seriously.

^ Oh dear....

I can't elaborate this minute, but I also saw the film on Thursday night and was hugely disappointed.

It was an episodic mess that I found surprisingly cold. It has moments, obviously -- "Be Italian," even if entirely misconceived visually, is incredibly rousing, and Cotillard and Day-Lewis do very strong work -- but I was surprised how flat most of it felt.

It doesn't even offer enough of the entertainment/razzle-dazzle to coast on to make up for the lack of substance. Most of these numbers aren't big, splashy, fun sequences; they're character songs, and considering there is ZERO actual character definition (except for Cotillard), they just get boring after a while.

More than a handful of the songs end up coming off as nothing but throwaways (which wasn't really the case in the stage production), and at that, throwaways that aren't particularly (a) entertaining, or (b) illuminating about the women singing them, or what they mean to Guido.

Dench's and Hudson's numbers did nothing but make me go (a) "wow, they can sing pretty well" and (b) "what the f*** am I -- or the movie -- getting out of this song?"

And for the record, Marshall recycling his approach to "Chicago" is, by and large, what sinks the movie. Staging every musical sequence (except for "Take It All") in the same film soundstage grows extremely monotonous/dull, and, sad to say, my eyes started to glaze over during some of them (as excited as I was for Dench to sing/dance, her number is sleep-inducing).

Updated On: 12/7/09 at 01:34 AM

"It was an episodic mess that I found surprisingly cold."

But that's the SHOW itself.

After speaking with a good friend of mine, who saw both Broadway productions of "NINE", and the film, she said that the film of NINE translated well to the screen (not to mention that its all about movies).

She said, that it was like the film of "Chicago". Its like Chicago in the way that it is an "all star" cast performing their hearts out in a sexy musical that you can agree is a great representation of the stage musical. She went on to say that it is one of the better musicals to be filmed in the last little while. This film is about the show, and the material, not all glitz and glamour.

Variety has given it a very solid review, so I guess I'll ignore the fool who refers to Judi Dench as "the old lady who plays M in the James Bond films".

This always happens. People desperately want a movie/show to be good/great, so they irrationally defend it even though they haven't seen it. Let me clarify (and for the record, I really enjoy the stage production of NINE, but I hardly think it's a masterpiece):


""It was an episodic mess that I found surprisingly cold."
But that's the SHOW itself. "

Not quite. The show, like the movie, is basically vignettes of the women in Guido's life, but in the show, it feels like they're all vaguely connected by Guido's narrative throughline. Here, in the film, it FEELS episode because it seems every few minutes like we're in a different movie, and we feel little-to-no attahcment to Guido or the story, because Marshall's too busy rushing everything along. And in regards to the coldness, sure, NINE isn't a bucket of warm emotionality, but at the end of the show, I felt like I'd gotten to know this character a little bit, and felt relatively satisfied. Here, there's nothing but a void.

And, hey, CHICAGO didn't really have an ounce of emotion (except maybe Amos), but it packed enough entertainment and "razzle dazzle" into its running time that it didn't really matter. What shocked me about the movie version of NINE is how effing bo-ring it was. The musical numbers are shot identically, and so statically, it's difficult to be engaged.



"The musical is episodic. The movie the musical is based on is episodic. Why shouldn't this be episodic?

Die hard fans of the show aren't going to like this because diehard fans of the show take issue with cuts that the creators feel are necessary is translating the show. Look at the musicals from the past decade that tried to retain as much of the stage show as possible. They suck. The ones that actually took care in adapting, not simply filming what was on stage, are the better musical films."

Like I said above, the musical and movie are both episodic, but the latter feels DISJOINTED and schizophrenic (seriously, go see this movie and try finding a rationale why Kate Hudson's character -- and "Cinema Italiano" -- are in the movie).


Look, nothing I'm going to convince those of you DYING to see the film that it'll be anything less than a masterpiece -- but I went in very excited. Love the cast, really like the show, thought Marshall's work on "Chicago" was brilliant -- but the film is lacking a real pulse, something I didn't think was possible from this material.

Make up your own mind, but mark my words, reaction is going to be all over the place on this one.

Never got thru 8 1/2 movie but loved the 9 revival.

The memory of a gutted score makes it to painful to watch.

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When it pops up on Netflix, I will than give it a whirl.

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