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9
2009 has been unkind to the nerd. Just about every "nerd project" you can name has been plagued by shoddy writing and the stench of disappointment, save for Star Trek (and even then, nerds being nerds, they'll say it was plagued by shoddy writing as well, something no one should say in a summer dominated by Transformers 2). Unfortunately, 9 isn't an exception.
Who could've guessed that a movie produced by Timur Bekmambetov and Tim Burton would've been all style over substance?
Okay, you know those Monty Oum videos where video game characters fight these ridiculously epic battles? That's pretty much what 9 is, and that's where it works. It's when people start talking that everything goes south.
I swear to God, I have no idea who the target audience for this is. The monsters are too scary for children (they look like nursery toys designed by Clive Barker), but the story is so simplistic that I can't imagine any but the most hoi of polloi enjoying it, and they're all watching All About Steve anyway. There's an exchange that literally goes "We have to follow the leader!" "But what if the leader is wrong?" That's not a paraphrase, that's exactly how it goes. Elijah Wood and John C. Reilly read those lines. Of course, they never really explain why they all follow this leader anyway, since he never does anything but act like a dink. I bet Hayden Panettiere didn't even do an internet video about how cool he is.
The story just never goes beyond the premise. There's no twists, no surprises, no character moments, it's just the ragdolls fighting robots. The tagline goes "When our world ended, their mission began," but they don't have a mission! You'd think they'd have to do something like reboot the human race or find fertile ground or something, but no, apparently they were just created to chillax around after the end of the world because "life must go on."
Of course, you might forgive all that until the end of the movie, because you want to support movies that aren't remakes or All About Steve, and because how bad can it be if Tim Burton is getting a paycheck, but then we reach the end.
( The end. )
Gamer
I should preface this review by saying that if you didn't like the Crank movies, you're not going to like this. It's played a little straighter than all that, but the Crank guys haven't gotten any classier. Milo Ventimiglia plays a character named Rick Rape, for instance, although he's still more appealing a character than Peter Petrelli. Weird, that.
But (sadly enough) this is probably one of the more cerebral films being released right now. The basic premise is that video games and internet porn have turned against us. Society has become so jaded to violence and exploitation that the only way it can hold our interest is to be real. It has to be real people dying and us actively exploiting women to get our money, and Michael C. Hall's ridiculous accent is here to fill that void. He's created a technology by which one person can control another, and then turned that into a clear parody of Second Life, Society, and your standard gladiatorial combat thing (with Halo-style teabagging, mind you), Slayerz.
That idea does get more of a work-out than Joss Whedon gave the Dollhouse technology (zombies? Really?), but I was kinda disappointed they didn't do more with it. The movie spends maybe too much time on Society and surprisingly little time on the interaction between Kable, the hero, and Simon, the player who controls him. Obviously, Society is a fresher concept than Slayerz, but when Kable can kick ass without Simon directing his motions, it kinda makes you wonder why they bother. You'd think there'd be more of a buddy comedy vibe there.
Anyway, if you're bored of watching Running Man, this'll do the trick, even if the story never does figure out how to tie all its threads together (I'm still not really sure what Kyra Sedgwick was doing there). It's possibly worth seeing just for Michael C. Hall as a bugfuck-crazy supervillain who says things like "I hope one day to have the opportunity to breach your firewall." But if you're only reading this to see me rant about Rick Rape, I'd say you'll be just as happy staying home, even if they don't have Running Man on Blu-Ray yet.
ETA: Looking at the IMDB page, I notice two things. One, that really was John Leguizamo. I totally thought that would be a poor man's John Leguizamo. And second, Zoe Bell was in this movie and I didn't notice her? C'mon, Hollywood, that's just mean.
2009 has been unkind to the nerd. Just about every "nerd project" you can name has been plagued by shoddy writing and the stench of disappointment, save for Star Trek (and even then, nerds being nerds, they'll say it was plagued by shoddy writing as well, something no one should say in a summer dominated by Transformers 2). Unfortunately, 9 isn't an exception.
Who could've guessed that a movie produced by Timur Bekmambetov and Tim Burton would've been all style over substance?
Okay, you know those Monty Oum videos where video game characters fight these ridiculously epic battles? That's pretty much what 9 is, and that's where it works. It's when people start talking that everything goes south.
I swear to God, I have no idea who the target audience for this is. The monsters are too scary for children (they look like nursery toys designed by Clive Barker), but the story is so simplistic that I can't imagine any but the most hoi of polloi enjoying it, and they're all watching All About Steve anyway. There's an exchange that literally goes "We have to follow the leader!" "But what if the leader is wrong?" That's not a paraphrase, that's exactly how it goes. Elijah Wood and John C. Reilly read those lines. Of course, they never really explain why they all follow this leader anyway, since he never does anything but act like a dink. I bet Hayden Panettiere didn't even do an internet video about how cool he is.
The story just never goes beyond the premise. There's no twists, no surprises, no character moments, it's just the ragdolls fighting robots. The tagline goes "When our world ended, their mission began," but they don't have a mission! You'd think they'd have to do something like reboot the human race or find fertile ground or something, but no, apparently they were just created to chillax around after the end of the world because "life must go on."
Of course, you might forgive all that until the end of the movie, because you want to support movies that aren't remakes or All About Steve, and because how bad can it be if Tim Burton is getting a paycheck, but then we reach the end.
( The end. )
Gamer
I should preface this review by saying that if you didn't like the Crank movies, you're not going to like this. It's played a little straighter than all that, but the Crank guys haven't gotten any classier. Milo Ventimiglia plays a character named Rick Rape, for instance, although he's still more appealing a character than Peter Petrelli. Weird, that.
But (sadly enough) this is probably one of the more cerebral films being released right now. The basic premise is that video games and internet porn have turned against us. Society has become so jaded to violence and exploitation that the only way it can hold our interest is to be real. It has to be real people dying and us actively exploiting women to get our money, and Michael C. Hall's ridiculous accent is here to fill that void. He's created a technology by which one person can control another, and then turned that into a clear parody of Second Life, Society, and your standard gladiatorial combat thing (with Halo-style teabagging, mind you), Slayerz.
That idea does get more of a work-out than Joss Whedon gave the Dollhouse technology (zombies? Really?), but I was kinda disappointed they didn't do more with it. The movie spends maybe too much time on Society and surprisingly little time on the interaction between Kable, the hero, and Simon, the player who controls him. Obviously, Society is a fresher concept than Slayerz, but when Kable can kick ass without Simon directing his motions, it kinda makes you wonder why they bother. You'd think there'd be more of a buddy comedy vibe there.
Anyway, if you're bored of watching Running Man, this'll do the trick, even if the story never does figure out how to tie all its threads together (I'm still not really sure what Kyra Sedgwick was doing there). It's possibly worth seeing just for Michael C. Hall as a bugfuck-crazy supervillain who says things like "I hope one day to have the opportunity to breach your firewall." But if you're only reading this to see me rant about Rick Rape, I'd say you'll be just as happy staying home, even if they don't have Running Man on Blu-Ray yet.
ETA: Looking at the IMDB page, I notice two things. One, that really was John Leguizamo. I totally thought that would be a poor man's John Leguizamo. And second, Zoe Bell was in this movie and I didn't notice her? C'mon, Hollywood, that's just mean.
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