9

Editorial

Sometimes, the pleasure is all in the details. The quaint and strangely creaky 9 isn't going to revolutionise animated storytelling or galvanise family audiences used to having their emotions slickly manipulated, but its peculiar style — somewhere between the digital delight of Pixar and the hand-crafted nostalgia of Henry Selick — is a personal vision that marks an original debut for director Shane Acker. Fans of post-apocalyptic animation should not miss seeing it in cinemas, where the visuals really thrive.

Co-produced by Tim Burton, 9 is essentially a feature-length remix of Acker's Oscar-nominated 2005 short film. It's easy to see what caught Burton's attention. The characters, with their gangly limbs, expressive bug eyes and inquisitive gaits, echo Burton's sketches, while their burlap-sack exteriors recall Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The sepia-toned world, blending the junkyard landscapes of WALL•E with a WWI battlefield, is the setting for this post-apocalyptic tale in which its heroes are the only survivors of a war between man and machines — miniature sack robots crafted with the soul of man. 9's universe is a playground for the director's fertile imagination, where the characters' eyes function like camera irises, cyclops spiders devour souls, and a mechanical pterodactyl swoops through the black sky powered by a fan. Meanwhile, the machines that stomp the charred earth resemble a cross between Star Wars' AT-AT walkers and War Of The Worlds' tripods. It's fantastic stuff.

It's a shame the story isn't a match for Acker's rich art direction. Having built an intriguing premise, the script merely resolves things matter-of-factly; the generic action strives for a classic hero arc, when the visuals suggest a more oblique, melancholy tone would have served the film better. Really, though, there's so much to savour here that it'd be unfair to demerit the movie on story alone.

Luke Goodsell