Movie 48: Nine

This would be the musical Nine, not the animated film 9 which I’ll review in a couple of weeks probably.

Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a legendary director, inspired by Fellini, working on his ninth film. The only problem is that there is no script and no idea. There is a title, Italia, but the director is burned out and overwhelmed with personal issues. Not surprising considering he has a wife, a mistress and is recognised wherever he goes. He’s also coming off a number of flops. So he tries to run away to the country, striving to find inspiration for his next masterpiece

When the first few minutes of a musical consist of people singing “La la la la” you know what your in for and it ain’t good. While that’s not actually all that true in this case it does kind of set the tone.

This is a movie of two elements, a drama and a musical. And the drama is great, fantastic at times though let down for me personally by one element which I’ll get to. The story of a director struggling to find his inspiration and having personal problems is very good. And that director is played by Daniel Day-Lewis but I sort of didn’t realise that for a while as I forgot he was in it.

I don’t know if its because he generally, from what I’ve seen, plays characters that have stand out qualities and mannerisms but I generally didn’t recognise him probably looking more like himself than normal. It’s a sign of a great actor. I got flashes of Lewis, but most of the time I was watching an Italian guy. A bad actor would have flashes of character. And when I say flashes in this case it literally was, just a glance. Great performance here. In fact the majority of the cast is damned good.

Marion Cotillard seemed a bit patchy to me but she had some great moments too. Her accent sounded a bit off. Nothing major to complain about, but just short of constantly good. Penelope Cruz on the other hand… I just don’t get it. I thought she was well cast in Vicky Christina Barcelona (which I found over rated) but she’s a bloody soap actress to me. She prima donna’s about, never has me believing she’s putting in a performance and pouts around. I don’t find her all that attractive but you’d think she was a goddess. A goddess with Meryl Streep hidden inside. She’s not, she’s a bit shit. And she was the weak point of the drama for me, though the character was no doubt meant to be like that.

She did sing admirably though. Everyone has a good set of pipes. But there is a bit problem with the films musical elements. They don’t fit very well. A few do blend in with the narrative but honestly it felt like I was pausing the movie, watching a music video and starting the movie again for most of them. After an hour I actually started dreading musical numbers cropping up. In a bloody MUSICAL that isn’t a good thing.

I’ll be doing Oscar posts soon so I’ll comment on the song that’s been nominated then. It’s “Take It All” but I thought it was “Be Italian”. I’m glad it wasn’t the later as while that’s a good number, it mainly stands out for the tambourines which is hardly a best song. It’s best percussion. And it is good percussion.

Maybe rent this, feel free to hit the skip button on the music numbers to get to the next chapter then listen to the soundtrack after. And next time film makers learn how to blend your music in to the film. I love me a musical, but you fucked this one up.

Next up: Crazy Heart