9? More like ‘Nein!’ as in ‘No, don’t go!’. While visually stunning 9 really doesn’t offer too much in originality. Secret of NIMH, Final Fantasy, Star Wars, Blade Runner, and Toy Story and all meshed together clumsily in this story about life after people.

The premise of 9 is this; Man makes great technological advances and creates a machine that can make other machines. However since man is always weaponizing every invention we ever construct, our fool hardy efforts land us in a whole heap of trouble during the great machine/robot civil war. All life is extinguished, except for 9 ‘Stitchpunk’  creations that house individual portions of an old mans soul. 8 of these creations had already been activated and sent out into the world just in time to witness the fall of humanity and burrow their way into hiding until all the machines fall apart and are destroyed save for one ‘The Beast’.

9, the titular character arrives late to the game, but he’s brought a magical/advanced-science pendant/amulet with him. The movie becomes one big chase after this, the characters for from A to B, back to A, back to B. The key chase scenes are interesting, in the ways that they take the remnants of our giant world and make obstacles for the tiny sack-men. But other than that I found myself mostly bored with 9

5 of the 9 sock-puppets are killed throughout the movie by having their souls sucked out by the master machine once it claims the magic pendant. Ultimately they can’t destroy the machine, it won’t be good for the absorbed souls. So they have to get the magic pendent back from the machine so they can... destroy the machine. What?

It’s funny to me that this is a movie about the preservation of life, more importantly the human soul. Funny because this feels like a completely soulless movie. It just wasn’t what I was expecting. Focus Features last attempt at animation was Coraline, which I actually enjoyed, you can’t win them all I guess.

If you want to see a movie that looks really cool, but lacks substance. See 9.

9 is Rated PG-13 for violence and scary images, and is 79 minutes long.