My whole family has seen Nine on Broadway. When my sister was dying to go to the new movie, hoping for a dancing, singing spectacular of at least Chicago (also directed by Rob Marshall) caliber, I had thought to myself "Huh. I wonder if the story is fleshed out."
The Broadway play itself hangs loosely together, and has always essentially reminded me of a Vegas cabaret; one by one the ladies come out and do their big, sexy number -- with a few extremely lovely ballads interspersed. Antonio Banderas carried the lead when I saw it, but that lead is a heavy load; a character with virtually no redeeming qualities save for charisma and a talent that is talked about but never seen: making movies.
The new movie Nine features Fergie, Kate Hudson, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Day Lewis, among others, and every single aforementioned person is worse than the last. I normally like several of those actors, but the only artists who shone through what is the slowest screenplay and most horribly directed catastrophe I've seen in years -- and that includes a lot of really weird theater -- were Dame Judi Dench (of course) and Marion Cotillard (who you may remember as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose). Their performances were beautiful, but didn't even sort of save the movie; it's still not worth seeing. Adding insult to injury, one of Cotillard's major songs was cut.
I enjoyed two things at Nine: my Diet Coke and the joy I felt when I leaned over to my dad and whispered "I HATE this movie!" and he said "Me, too!"
With no further ado, 10 Reasons I Hated Nine (and so did the rest of my family and my boyfriend):
1. The Story.
Nine is a story about an egomaniacal movie director with whom everyone is in love. Women throw themselves at him, and he, because he is helplessly only nine years old in his mind, has sex with all of them (make sense of THAT, Freud), cheats, lies, and breaks their hearts because, apparently, he doesn't know how to love. He's like Tiger Woods, only even more boring, particularly because the first hour and a half of the movie is spent simply establishing what a jerk he is with absolutely no build or interest. Then, at the very end, he has a hallucination -- SPOILER, unless you've ever read a book, seen a movie, or been told a story, in which case you know how this is gonna go -- with his mother (a breathtaking, yet wooden Sophia Loren) which inspires him to ... I don't know ... cry about how he hurts everybody. Then, he decides to make a different movie about how to get his wife back. In his mind, all the women he's allegedly "done" show up to watch the filming of it. The End.
2. The Lighting.
Just in case the storyline wasn't already offensive enough to women in its poor-bad-things-just-can't-help-loving-this-rich-married-guy-ness, Rob Marshall took special pains to make every single one of them look TERRIBLE. Bad skin, bad hair and makeup, and absolutely unmistakably deliberate horrible lighting. Some stills:
Don't let Hollywood fool you; Nicole Kidman is a robot. "Unusual Way" is one of the most beautiful and emotionally complex songs ever written for the stage. She sings it about an octave lower than it's written, poorly, and with a face presumably paralyzed with botox. The song is also cut up into pieces which make it seem to be part of a longer conversation, which not only slows down the film (which at this point is practically reversing), but is incredibly offensive, again, to women.
4. Daniel Day Lewis Never Smiles and I Wanted Him to Die.
He was so terrible, so completely unlovable. Was that the point? That's not a very good point. I loud-whispered "kill yourself" during a sensitive moment. I couldn't help myself. If you identify with this protagonist in the least, you are probably a bad person. Good luck.
5. The "MOVIE."
The stakes attached to DDL's moral transformation are that if he doesn't learn how to love, he can never make another good movie (I think). The trouble is, we don't give a flying fox about his movie. We don't know that he's a genius, only that he's kind of a jerkstore who's got everyone around him making apologies for him so he can have lots of sex and not write a script. I hoped "Guido" would never make another movie as long as he lived by about ten minutes in. Possible suggestion for improvement: attach stakes to the movie itself; like, if Guido doesn't make a good movie, a puppy dies.
6. The Moral.
The moral of this movie, from what I gather, is that if you're a possible sex addict, a terrible businessman, and a frustrated artist, and you feel bad, it's your fault. More succinctly: "If you shoot yourself in the foot, it hurts." Thanks, Captain Obvious.
7. The Sex.
The first hour and a half, or "Chapter One: Guido is a Jerk," (prior to "Chapter Two: Guido Feels Sad") has a series of oversexed songs by each female, as I mentioned. It is so gratuitous it's practically soft porn. The women look so terrible, it's practically an act of violence.
8. The Abuse of Judi Dench.
Dame Judi Dench is one of the finest actresses of our time. Here are some things she could have been doing instead of this movie: making tea, writing a children's book, gardening, skiing, having a glass of wine, or making a movie that didn't suck.
9. The Editing.
As if the ingredients weren't already mostly rotten, Marshall cooked them in a microwave on defrost for twelve days. Every cut seems to slow the movie down, nothing builds, the song "Simple" is gone, and it's as though each take was chosen for its lack of warmth.
10. The Two Hours I Can Never Have Back.
Rob Marshall, your next project should be a time machine. You owe it to society now.
The one creative moment: During Fergie's lusty-busty "Be Italian," there's a dance involving tambourines and sand. It's not worth seeing the movie for, though. Don't even Netflix it. YouTube it. Here, you don't even have to leave this page.
You're welcome.
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