NINE (2009) goes 0.5 too far

Posted by Stephen Jannise

I have managed to see two astonishing misfires at the cinema in recent weeks. The first was Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones at Butt-Numb-a-Thon, and the second is Rob Marshall’s Nine, a remake of Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, 8 1/2. Many who have seen Nine do not compare it favorably with Marshall’s 2002 Oscar-winning hit Chicago for a variety of reasons, though I have not yet come across a mention of the most glaring problem with Marshall’s latest musical venture: the music is weak.

Regardless of Chicago’s shortcomings as a film, even its greatest detractors cannot deny the allure of its music, which features some all-time classic showtunes like “All That Jazz” and “Cell Block Tango.” Nine suffers not only by having a complete lack of similarly strong tunes but also by showcasing a litany of actresses who have been better before. Watching Nicole Kidman deliver her droll, lifeless ballad had me wishing I could watch Moulin Rouge! instead, watching Marion Cotillard sing her torch song made me yearn for La Vie en Rose, and Fergie’s appearance as the seaside tramp Saraghina made me miss, well, the seaside tramp of the Fellini original.

Remember her?

Only the sex appeal of Penelope Cruz and Kate Hudson manages to bring some energy into this dead-on-arrival film. In most films, Penelope Cruz is sexy without even really trying. In her seduction number here, she tries, and it’s almost too much to bear. And Kate Hudson, gifted with the film’s best song “Cinema Italiano,” makes the most of it, singing with great aplomb and shimmying around in her Chicago-esque, frilly, sequined costume.

Yowza!

As for Daniel Day-Lewis, who recently gave one of the great cinema performances in There Will Be Blood, he gets entirely lost in this shuffle of beautiful women. This story of a filmmaker bouncing from one woman to the next, trying to rediscover his creative spark, certainly presents a real danger that the lead character could find himself standing still while a movie goes on around him, and this is what happens to Day-Lewis. Where Marcello Mastroianni really seemed to be present and participatory in every scene of Fellini’s film, Day-Lewis seems to act in this film simply as a vaudeville announcer, ushering one actress after another onto the stage to do her number.

Without strong music or a strong lead presence, this film never had much of a chance. After similar failures to adapt modern musicals like The Phantom of the Opera and The Producers to the screen, you would think film producers would start learning the obvious lesson here: without the immediacy and power of the live Broadway medium, these sub-par songs are simply not good enough to hold the attention at the cinema. But who am I kidding? I’m sure we’ll be seeing previews for Wicked: The Movie any day now.