Nine is based on the stage show of the same name which was based on the famous Fellini film 8 1/2, the story here is that famous Italian director Guido played by Daniel Day Lewis is trying to put together his latest film called Italia, the only difference being he hasn't got a script.
Alright folks, I'm going to make this crystal clear: This movie is an absolute mess, and the reasons are seven, but before we get to the film's most fundamental problem, I will address the 6 others:
1. The utter waste of good actresses like Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Judi Dench.
2. The film goes to great lengths to cast people like Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson and Sophia Loren only to give then very little to do, 2 scenes and a dance number is all they get at best.
3. The film's musical numbers are not threaded into the fabric of the script which is vital to the success of these types of films, and to cite some examples for you look at The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin and the hard work that Howard Ashman and Alan Menken did to make the songs and the story mesh together as one.
4. The Jewellery, I have said this before and I will say it again, please don't let people wear jewellery in movies, it's distracting from the job of the actors to make us believe in the character they're playing.
5. The singing and dancing by the actors, it's not very good for the most part and it's either one, the other or both that kills it.
6. As the film unfolded like a train wreck, part of me kept wishing for Rob Grant and Doug Naylor who wrote Red Dwarf to come in and vastly rewrite this script, although technically that isn't a problem it was still something that detracted from the film for me.
I could go on and on but those as I said are only the smallest problems this film has compared to the fundamental problem, and that is the central character played by Day-Lewis, it's hard to care about him, I mean he goes through the film groaning and moaning about how everything is all falling apart but it's hard to care about that because he goes around behaving like a spoilt child and on top of that, Daniel Day-Lewis may be one of the greatest actors of our time, but he can't sing to save his life.
But there is a small positive, what's this I hear someone saying "A positive about all of this, wow I'm shocked" well there is and that is the songs called "Be Italian" which is performed by Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie and "My Husband makes Movies" performed by Cotillard in a sad and haunting type of way.
To sum this all up, don't see this movie, I loathed it and judging by the fact that it bombed in cinemas, I'm not alone, if you want to see "Be Italian" look it up on YouTube and a critique of the film industry, go and rent the 1990 film White Hunter, Black Heart with Clint Eastwood, my final rating for this in .5 out of 5, yes only half a star and that's because I hated it that much.
As an addendum to this, here is the YouTube link to Be Italian: http://snipurl.com/xe9vx
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