Movie Reviews: "Nine"

[JamesG]

Movie Reviews: Nine

Movie musicals have struggled at the box office since their heyday in the '40s and '50s, and few have found favor with critics.

Last year's Mamma Mia! did solid business in the U.S. and was a standout blockbuster overseas, but most critics hated it.

That's the way Nine, based on he Fellini classic 8 1/2, appears to be performing.

As it rolled out in a handful of theaters, it drew big crowds. Now, as it opens wide, some analysts are predicting that it will do decent business even in the face of mostly negative reviews.



A.O. Scott in the New York Times noted that in one song, a lead character played by Daniel Day-Lewis sings, "I can't make this movie."

Comments Scott: "Substitute "watch" for "make" and provide your own music."


The director, Rob Marshall, also directed the movie version of Chicago, but unlike that musical, writes Claudia Puig in USA Today, "there are no show-stopping musical numbers here. It takes a couple viewings/listenings to appreciate -- or even distinguish -- its songs."


The problem, some critics suggest, is not the songs themselves but the actors who perform them. In the old days, beginning with Al Jolson and continuing later with Frank Sinatra and Doris Day, popular singers were cast in movies and asked to act.

Now the reverse is true.

Nine features a raft of high-power stars, but only Oscar winner Marion Cotillard is a trained singer.



Comments Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times about the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis: "Because Nine is a musical, it would help if your leading man could sing. ... Love Daniel Day-Lewis, excellent racing shirtless through the forest, but a song-and-dance man he is not."

Lou Lumenick in the New York Post comments that the movie has been contrived "to suit the vocal limitations of its Weinstein-gerrymandered cast."

Adds Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Rarely have so many Oscar-winners struggled so strenuously for such meager payoff."

Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe writes that Nine is the "Olive Garden version" of 8 1/2. "You can easily imagine the movie's catchiest song, "be Italian," used to sell bowls of spaghetti."


And Roger Ebert closes his exasperated review of Nine with this advice."In the life of anyone who loves movies, there must be time to see 8 1/2. You can watch it instantly right now on Netflix or Amazon. What are you waiting for?"

-IMDB News

[Pitooey]

And here I was looking foward to seeing it.