Movie 60: 9

HA, sixty nine.

On an alternate Earth (the technology looks 1940’s sci fi ish, the leader and his party look Nazi like) a man creates a machine to help mankind. It’s use is twisted and turned to war. The machines then turn on humanity and wipe us all out. Before that can happen the man makes 9 little creatures that, with the help of an totem, are humanities last hope.

This film is pretty, it’s animated if you weren’t aware, and you can see Tim Burton’s influence on it though that might just be on the director Shane Acker more than anything else. A film has to be more than pretty though, and this feels a lot like a video game.

It probably would have been quite a fun little puzzle/action game too. And it would have looked great. But it never really fleshes itself in to a full on movie. The plot twists and revelations are pretty easy to see coming though I was a little wrong on what would happen. That’s partly because the films resolution doesn’t seem to follow its own logic.

I also got the feeling that this would have worked well as a short. It was a short, it was fleshed out to a long. Should maybe have left it as a short.

Your looking at pretty hard sci-fi fantasy here so if you don’t like The Chronicles of Riddick and it’s ilk (I do as it happens) your probably not going to like this too much. If you do, you’ll enjoy it but it won’t be something your reach for on your shelf a lot.

The voice cast all do well, the individual creatures (nearly gave a spoiler there, though I spotted it a mile away) are pretty well characterised though 8 seems to be more of a jerk than he needed to be. It’s not really one for the kiddies though, particularly as the skeletal monster types would probably give them some nightmares.

Kiddies you don’t like might be a good bet though. And older ones can handle that stuff.

Next up: The Eye