Nine

[Big Magilla]

Judi Dench has a background in musical theatre. She was Sally Bowles in the original London production of Cabaret and later played the Lotte Lenya role in a London revival. She also recorded a well-regarded studio cast version in the Lenya role in 1993.

If she can't sing in Nine it's because she's either lost her voice or was directed to fail. My guess is a little of both with an emphasis on the latter.

[The Original BJ]

With so much talent assembled for this picture, it should be surprising the final product is such a dud. But, unfortunately, it's not too surprising, because although the actors here are clear talents, they fail to meet one major criterion it's necessary to have in spades, and that's...

WHEN YOU CAST MUSICALS, YOU MUST CAST ACTORS WHO CAN SING. This, to me, is a no-brainer. I don't care how many Oscars someone has -- if they don't have the pipes, they're going to sink a musical. And that's what happens here. Daniel Day-Lewis can barely talk-sing through his number. Penélope Cruz -- saddled with the soprano vocal showcase "Call From the Vatican" -- can only muster up some breathy, off-key warbling. Judi Dench has a number that is hideously embarrassing. Kate Hudson can barely enunciate the lyrics to a new song which actually has the audacity to rhyme "prism" with "neo-realism." I have huge affection for Nicole Kidman as an actress, but her limited performance of a number as stirring as "Unusual Way" isn't the eleventh-hour moment this film needs. Marion Cotillard fares a bit better in her two numbers, as at least she puts some emotion into them, but she still is only adequate in the vocals department.

Not surprisingly, the best performance in the film, and the only number that really sells, is Fergie's...whaddayaknow, the one singer in the cast! (I'm sure, though, she wasn't half as brilliant as Mrs. Tee ).

Rob Marshall's staging is also a big problem, as he uses the same concept he did in Chicago -- all the musical numbers are fantasies taking place on an empty stage. But I thought this worked tremendously well in Chicago, and doesn't here, and here are the reasons why: 1) The songs in Chicago were written to be performed in the style of vaudeville acts, so it's not out of place to see them in that environment. Not so the songs in Nine -- here it just seems like Marshall is afraid to have the characters burst into song, so he stages all the musical numbers as fantasy. 2) In Chicago, there was a consistency to the musical fantasies. They were all, specifically, Roxie's fantasy. In Nine, they're ostensibly Guido's thoughts, but a number of the songs don't even really work that way; "My Husband Makes Movies," for instance seems like a portal into Luisa's mind, not Guido's. 3) Been-there-done-that syndrome. This approach worked in Chicago because it felt fresh. In Nine, it feels tired and unimaginative, and I have to say, no sale.

The film also incorporates some gritty, black-and-white, Italian-style flashbacks that unfortunately make the whole affair feel like Fellini for Dummies. I can't imagine anyone who has seen one Italian film feeling like this movie is just a silly imitation.

I even wasn't crazy about the design elements. I liked Dion Beebe's photography in Chicago, but if he wins awards for this, it'll simply be for most obvious use of source lighting. And the set design feels as empty and underthought as some of the musical numbers it houses.

When we discussed the three types of films that might benefit from an expanded Best Picture roster (more commercial efforts, smaller acclaimed films, and middlebrow Oscar bait), it was the last group -- to which Nine certainly belongs -- that I feared the most. I also think it's these kind of nominees that will make the least people happy, because there's so little enthusiasm anywhere, even in the popular realm, for these type of films. Here's hoping Nine is mostly MIA from the Oscars, but given its pedigree and its solid-enough precursor showing, I'm not sure its less-than-enthusiastic reaction will be able to kill months of award-bait hype.

[Zahveed]

I doubt the genre's going anywhere.

I think you and I were the only ones here who liked Sweeney Todd, and I had my reservations.

I did too.

[The Original BJ]

I saw this last night and thought it was a complete train wreck. The worst of this season's Oscar movies. And a real disappointment for me, because I loved Chicago.

More thoughts later.

[Big Magilla]

I doubt the genre's going anywhere.

I think you and I were the only ones here who liked Sweeney Todd, and I had my reservations.

As many people as loved Mamma Mia! and Moulin Rouge! there were probably just as many who loathed them, especially the latter.

High School Musical? Ugh! If this is an example of where the genre is headed, I think I've proved my point. It's already gone down the toilet.

[anonymous1980]

I'm sad, too, not because this one musical seems to be a failure but because as I said in a prior post it's just one more nail into the coffin of the genre.
.

Oh, I don't know about that. Mamma Mia!, Chicago and Hairspray have all grossed over $100 million. Not to mention the High School Musical franchise which is quite profitable. Moulin Rouge!, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Sweeney Todd each have significant fan bases too.

I doubt the genre's going anywhere.



Edited By anonymous on 1261235003

[Big Magilla]

I'm sad, too, not because this one musical seems to be a failure but because as I said in a prior post it's just one more nail into the coffin of the genre.

Broadway book musicals to screen musicals were a very short-lived genre. We had Show Boat in 1936 and gain in 1951, followed periodically by a number of others through 1968, but after that it was hit and miss - a Cabaret here, a Chicago there, but too many of the caliber of A Little Night Music, The Producers and Rent.

[ITALIANO]

I'm not surprised. When everyone here was expecting a masterpiece, I predicted that it wouldnt be very good, that this obviously wasnt material for a movie, and said so openly, risking crucifixion (the post is still there and can be found). I must admit that for once I wasnt attacked (after Dreamgirls they knew I could be right); I was ignored, which is probably even worse. My opinion clearly didnt count, it was disturbing and had to be quickly forgotten. This was a musical after all, and from a big Broadway hit (as if this means something). It HAD to be great. This board had decided already; I was as always the foreigner, in many ways.

I'm not surprised but I am a bit sad. This movie was shot in Italy, with lots of Italian actors (some very famous here) and technicians. I hoped it could be, if not very good, at least commercially successful, and I still hope so; for them, certainly not for Nicole Kidman or Penelope Cruz. And I am sad because this was supposed to be (and I feel that for once they were at least partly honest) a tribute to Federico Fellini; absurd and misguided, but still a tribute. It looks more like an insult from the reviews.

Still, if this movie fails to get a Best Picture nomination, it means that the plans of those who invented the new ten slots format will fail. Because this is exactly the kind of movie for which the "brilliant" idea was born, an expensive, VERY American (yes, I know, it's about Italy and Fellini, but trust me, it's VERY American), not very good but hopefully commercial effort; a movie which NEEDS the boost of a Best Picture nod and which, in turn, can boost the audience of the Oscar telecast. If it doesnt get nominated, the whole sense of the new system will crumble.



Edited By ITALIANO on 1261210860

[Damien]

Definitely sounds like a Best Picture nominee to me.

[Big Magilla]

Rex Reed in teh N.Y. Observer:

To the already overcrowded list of year-end disappointments bringing 2009 to a sorry close, you can add Nine. With a legendary Broadway score; director Rob Marshall (Chicago) hoping to repeat his musical Midas touch; and an all-star cast that redefines that overused word “fabulous,” a lot of Christmas bonbons were expected from the anticipated movie version of the 1982 Broadway classic. Alas, the movie delivers thistles instead.

The original musical, based on Fellini’s largely autobiographical film 8½ and directed by Tommy Tune, was pure genius. The movie is boring, pretentious, empty, heartless, interminable, cold and as richly flavored as a hard-boiled egg. The basic premise remains the same: A stressed-out director without a single word on paper for his next film retreats to a spa for a rest cure. One by one, the female muses in his life appear among the white tiles to inspire him, dressed elegantly in black. Let the razzle-dazzle begin. But in the movie, Guido, a director with a phony accent (a hopelessly miscast Daniel Day-Lewis, about as decadently Italian as Mickey Rooney), pushes a cast of thousands all over the place: press conferences, the sound stages of Cinecittà, the Appian Way, the Fountain of Trevi, the Amalfi Coast and every historic monument in Rome. When he sings, he’s climbing scaffolds like James Bond doing chin-ups. Songs have been dropped and characters added, to no avail. There’s his long-suffering wife (Marion Cotillard); his suicidal mistress (a scantily clad Penélope Cruz); his butch costume designer (Dame Judi Dench in a wig with Buster Brown bangs the color of doggie-doo); his dead mother (a matronly and badly photographed Sophia Loren, of all people); a neurotic movie star (Nicole Kidman) in a strapless gown wading through fountains; a fat prostitute on the beach (pop diva Fergie), who tried to seduce Guido when he was 9; and enough noisy chorus lines to make you reach for a Valium.

They all sing … and sing … and sing! Covered with bling, and not always in tune. Ms. Cruz does an erotically charged number inspired by Jack Cole’s choreography for Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The musical numbers all look alike, but Dame Judi belts out “Folies Bergere” better than the others, trailing a mile of red feathers. In a senseless role added to the film for no valid reason, a clueless Kate Hudson plays a trashy journalist from Vogue dancing on a runway that looks like a rock video set. Busty, porcine Fergie, beating a tambourine, leads a stage full of sluts on a stage full of sand. Sophia Loren should sue. Doesn’t Mr. Marshall know you don’t shoot a woman nearing 80 from under her chin? Because Guido is reaching back inside his brain to pull out memories, real and imagined, the movie plays leapfrog with time frames, switching from color to black and white without purpose. Onstage, there was so much glamour I couldn’t decide whom to concentrate on. In the movie, they’re so obnoxious I just wanted them to shut up and go home. The movie is busy, but in their failed homage to Fellini, they’ve lost his mystery and humor.

The fragmented script, expanded to include an army of men, now features jealous husbands, nervous producers, doctors with stomach pumps and hypocritical, autograph-collecting Catholic cardinals from the Vatican who ban Guido’s movies but secretly adore the sex scenes. The writers (including director Anthony Minghella, who died before it was finished, which might explain some of the holes) never find the words to deliver Guido from his midlife crisis and describe the detritus of his messy life. The women who swirl through his dreams would make better studies if they added up to a form of therapy, but the deadly script uses them as nothing more than props. Regrettably, none of the fury and passion that made them so memorable onstage has made its way into this loud but lifeless film spectacle. Without the necessary insight into these flamboyant women that a coherent script would provide, you end up caring about none of them. The characters strut and screech and shake their butts in a sexual faux frenzy, but remain as one-dimensional as cardboard. They knock themselves out cold, but it’s like a greatest-hits assembly of pop tunes and dirty dancing from floor shows in Atlantic City, inserted to make you forget that nothing else is going on. Nine is giddy, empty-headed and loud, but it never manages to prevent the audience from snoring. It’s a musical train wreck.



Edited By Big Magilla on 1261203587

[Big Magilla]

Lou Leminick, N.Y. Post *1/2

The musical “Nine” is ostensibly based on Federico Fellini’s autobiographical masterpiece “8 1/2.” But in the clumsy hands of director Rob Marshall, this tacky, all-star botch more closely resembles a video catalog for Victoria’s Secret.

Penelope Cruz wriggling around in her underwear — the heavily edited result cannot quite be called dancing — in the best number, “A Call From the Vatican,” is about as good as it’s going to get in this faux-Fosse eyesore.

Maury Yeston’s mediocre, imitation-Kander-and-Ebb 1982 Broadway musical has been further edited and updated to suit the vocal limitations of its Weinstein-gerrymandered cast.

Or, in the case of Kate Hudson as a journalist for American Vogue who vaguely tries to seduce our hero, the character and her awful number “Cinema Italiano” (in badly lit black-and-white) are interpolations that could be cut without changing the movie one whit.

Unfortunately, unlike in Marshall’s overrated “Chicago,” none of the numbers in "Nine" really advance the story but rather merely announce what's already been stated in dialogue -- such as "I Can't Make This Movie."

Not that any of the magic survives from Fellini's classic in this patchy adaptation of Arthur Kopit's Broadway book, credited to Michael Tolkin ("The Player") and the late Anthony Minghella.

Daniel Day-Lewis is fatally miscast as Fellini's alter ego Guido Contini, who is having trouble coming up with a story for his about-to-shoot movie in a weakly evoked 1965 Rome, which bears approximately the same relation to the real thing that Chef Boyardee does to fettuccine Alfredo.

One of our best actors, Day-Lewis unfortunately lacks the charm of stage predecessors Raul Julia and Antonio Banderas, so it is difficult to care at all about Guido's anguish over his career and his very complicated love life.

When he sings "I have nothing to say," he could very well be talking about "Nine."

Guido is married to the long- suffering Luisa (Marion Cotillard), his former leading lady, but carrying on a messy affair with the married Carla (Cruz) -- and quite possibly his current leading lady/muse, Claudia (the barely seen, frozen-faced Nicole Kidman).

Our hero also is haunted by ugly black-and-white flashbacks to his youth, where his involvement with a whore (Fergie, not bad) meets the disapproval of his mother (Sophia Loren, who sadly resembles a slightly melted exhibit from Madame Tussauds).

Each of these ladies -- except for Luisa, who gets two -- has a musical number, as does Judi Dench as Guido's costume designer and confidante, who gamely offers up the incongruous "Folies Bergere."

All of the numbers for some inexplicable reason (budget?) take place on the same massive soundstage.

It doesn't exactly make for gripping cinema, and neither does the choppy editing required to splice together a series of star turns that simply don't flow as a movie.

The jaw-droppingly awful "Nine" is the worst Broadway-to- Hollywood transfer since "The Producers" -- the cinematic equivalent of that movie's show "Springtime for Hitler."



Edited By Big Magilla on 1261199156

[OscarGuy]

I think mixed is a far better descriptor for this film. While there are those adamantly against it (Lou Lumenick, Betsy Sharkey, A.O. Scott and Scott Foundas), there are those who are definitely positive about it (Todd McCarthy, Joe Morgenstern, James Berardenelli, Peter Travers). And there are a lot of people (8 on Metacritic) who are just meh about it (they rate it mostly an average of 50).

I'm not saying it's not well liked, but saying it's universally despised is not an accurate statement, either. And, it's trended back up to 47%, but a truer number won't be available until next Monday or perhaps a week after that (since it opens wide Christmas)

[anonymous1980]

All That Jazz is universally panned? That's news to me. I own it on DVD and I've seen it like 3 times. It's one of my favorite musicals.

*edit* You were referring to Nine. My bad.



Edited By anonymous on 1261163739

[Eric]

The irony is that this film, which seems to resemble nothing except maybe Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, an over-praised cringe inducing piece of crap that inexplicably was nominated for nine Oscars and won four while the year's best musical, Milos Forman's wonderful film version of Hair failed to receive a single nomination having been dismissed in some quarters as "dated".

Thirty years later, the All That Jazz clone is being universally panned while the Broadway revival of Hair is winning awards and being singled out by critics as the year's best musical.

Hi, just dropping in again to say "Shut up, shut up, shut up already with this false All That Jazz/Hair dichotomy!"

[Big Magilla]

I'm beginning to seriously doubt that this will receive a Best Picture nomination.

Aside from costumes and maybe one of the songs, how many nominations are possible for a film that seems to be universally despised?

Invictus has gotten respectable reviews at best and The Lovely Bones, while generally dismissed, has its supporters, but aside from Larry King, who likes Nine?

It's a shame because every musical that fails tends to put another nail in the coffin of the genre. Will Follies and Sunset Boulevard ever get made? Will Lee Daniels' film of Miss Saigon be canclled before it goes into production?

The irony is that this film, which seems to resemble nothing except maybe Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, an over-praised cringe inducing piece of crap that inexplicably was nominated for nine Oscars and won four while the year's best musical, Milos Forman's wonderful film version of Hair failed to receive a single nomination having been dismissed in some quarters as "dated".

Thirty years later, the All That Jazz clone is being universally panned while the Broadway revival of Hair is winning awards and being singled out by critics as the year's best musical.