9: Out of 10, Essentially

I like cartoons. I especially like cartoons geared for adults, or at the very least older teens. Though many cried shenanigans at the evident similarities between Shane Acker's 9 and the game Little Big Planet, the similarities are superficial and at the very least unfounded. 9 is a sprawling, fast-paced dark fantasy. It starts too fast, but it keeps a steady pace and eventually, the audience catches up. Part Matrix, part Dark Crystal, part Toy Story, it's definitely a post-modern futuristic fairy tale for the new millennium. How's that for a sound bite, huh?

In an undisclosed future, deadly machines have taken over the planet, seemingly killing all living things. A misunderstood scientist creates a super-brain machine which inevitably churns out deadly Rube Goldbergian machines, warring with humanity. To save life, this same scientist built nine machines, each imbued with a portion of his soul. The ninth machine awakens with no understanding of this world, stumbles across the other eight machines, and makes a final stand against the re-awakened machine brain to restore life to Earth.

It's rare for an animated film to be so bleak. It's completely refreshing. Shane Acker's personal stamp is all over this film, and it's very clear that this is a personal vision. The characters are interesting; they represent the nine parts of a man's soul, yet have different personalities, strengths, and appearances. Even though he supposedly created the 9 concurrently, the materials used to construct them seem different; additionally, the length of time between the first doll and the last seems pretty ambiguous.

At first, it's hard to get into, simply because it launches into the story when 9 awakens. The reason behind the existence of the dolls isn't revealed until halfway through the film. Up until that point, it's primarily for the enjoyment of the computer generated effects, the bleak, stark apocalyptic world that these tiny dolls inhabit. And when you first see a mechanized robot with a cat's skull and razor claws? Or the pterodactyl made out of knives and scissors? That is some interesting stuff.

Overall, it's a visually stunning achievement in computer animation, and refreshing to see it from a basically independent animation team (i.e. not from Dreamworks Animation, Disney, Pixar, etc.). It's as cute and fantastically frightening as you're liable to see the apocalypse. Oh, yeah, and it has a pretty stellar voice cast: Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, John C. Riley, Martin Landau, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly... All great actors and lend superbly emotive voices to these odd little burlap dolls.

I'll have to give it four crazy-ass flying razor-bird monstrosity things out of five, or four oddly Nazi-ish human oppression turned death-machine fodder out of five.

Surf's Up: Penguins Surfing? It's Better Than It Sounds

I love kid's movies, most of the time. I think the only one I've written about so far here is Bee Movie, which wasn't exactly the best. I generally prefer films produced by Walt Disney's frozen head, but occasionally, other production companies will send out a film that's pretty decent, and occasionally, will even be better than expected. I haven't seen Sony Pictures Animation's first film Open Season yet, but it looked halfway decent. Their newest film, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is out now, I believe, and it looks like it could be good. We'll have to see; I was pretty impressed in general with Surf's Up.

The Lady brought it over last week, since she loves it. I wasn't sure what to think; I had some preconceived notions of penguin movies, from Happy Feet. I think the producers had a feeling about this, since there are some references to the fact that there's no singing, no dancing, etc. They almost over-reach with that, at times, putting in lots of hip, cultural references and a soundtrack filled with Green Day and popular music. It features a pretty stellar cast, starring Shia LaBeouf as the main character, Cody Maverick. Jeff Bridges stars as Geek, Zooey Deschanel as Lani, Jon Heder as Chicken Joe, Mario Cantone as Mikey (a shorebird talent scout), James Woods as Reggie Belafonte (a Don King-esque promoter sea otter), and Diedrich Bader as Tank Evans, an utterly fantastic character. I was particularly impressed with almost every scene between LaBeouf and Bridges, and I'm honestly curious if they recorded their scenes together.

Presented like a documentary, Surf's Up follows Cody Maverick, a young rockhopper penguin living in Shiverpool, apparently a penguin village in the arctic. His dream is to become a surfer, after a visit from the legendary Big Z, emperor penguin and king of the surfers. He eventually is discovered and goes along with a crew of penguins (and a Chicken, who surfed Lake Michigan) to a surfing competition on Pen Gu Island, apparently the best place to surf in the world. There he meets Tank (Bader), a giant king penguin, who won the title of top surfer from Big Z when Z supposedly died in a surfing accident at the last big competition. Cody is ambitious and full of heart (as per usual with these family movie heroes), but his skills are sort of lacking. He eventually learns about the true meaning of surfing, finding the joy in it, having fun with it, and learning that being number one isn't the best thing, the most important thing, and there are plenty of wacky shenanigans, sight gags, interesting characters, great voice work, and that ever-present and extremely interesting framing as a documentary.

Also, these three little penguin kids keep showing up, being interviewed briefly by the film crew (assuming they're penguins themselves, though to a certain extent, I keep thinking of them as being humans). They're pretty adorable; one of the kids keeps going into the water to "drown," so he can be saved by Lani (Deschanel). It's pretty much the cutest thing ever. As per usual with these kinds of anthropomorphic family movies, they always put fun little jokes in the periphery of the movie. Lani is a lifeguard, and so instead of one of those little red buoy things they used on Baywatch, she as a cute little squid guy, and he alternatively looks bored, amused, interested, etc., as she talks. Also, Jeff Bridges's character totally whizzes on Shia LaBeouf's character (because he stepped on some sort of sea urchin in a surfing accident). We also get a quick commentary from the pissed-off urchin, annoyed that many of his spines have been broken or are now missing.

The general plot of this movie is pretty similar to family friendly animated films. Plucky hero character with heart, trying to succeed, overcoming obstacles, sometimes pursuing a career or a path that he should have no real business pursuing (like the rat in Ratatouille, or something like that). There's a father figure, a vague love interest, and a strange, weird, dumb, or unusual friend. The obstacles aren't insurmountable, and after an initial failure, they finally reach the true meaning of what they want, and become better people/penguins/living toys/talking mice/whatever for it.

As I mentioned before, one of the things I'd be curious about is if LaBeouf and Bridges recorded their scenes in the same room together. A lot of their banter and interactions are extremely witty and interesting, and they seem too natural to be recorded separately (or even written that way). I'd like to see them on screen together sometime. I wish that LaBeouf was playing Bridges son in the new Tron movie. Oh well, maybe we'll get to see it sometime.

In general, the film as very cute, entertaining, amusing, sweet, and fun. It was better than I expected, had a lot of odd humour, interesting characters, and some great dialogue. Animated films are almost always good, when they're developed well. I was impressed with the computer graphics, as well, considering the majority of the movie took place in the ocean, with waves, rolling water, and thick jungles. Also, there are cute little Pen Guin natives, that first try to cook Chicken Joe, and then when he gives them squid-on-a-stick, he kind of becomes their leader, I guess? Also, while on the subject, Chicken Joe is a pretty wacky character, and I really like that he surfed Lake Michigan (which is something people actually do, it's not just a joke. There's actually a surf shop on the west coast of Michigan, and I've been meaning to check it out).

I'd recommend the movie if you're looking for an alternative to stuff like Happy Feet. There's no songs, no dancing, just some penguins that want to surf, for some reason. And they do, and it's actually pretty interesting. Also, some famous surfers make cameo appearances, like Kelly Slater and Rob Machado. James Woods is crazy awesome as usual, and there are some really great performances.

I give it four beefy penguin surfers kissing on trophies in their mom's house out of five, or four crazy hippie surfing fat penguins voiced by the awesome Jeff Bridges out of five.

Bee Movie

In sharp contrast to my last post, tonight I watched Bee Movie. This computer animated family film from Dreamworks features a bee named Barry B. Benson (voiced by Jerry Seinfeld) that decides to go outside the hive, try and seduce a human woman, and then sue the human race for stealing honey and selling it (featuring Ray Liotta Private Select honey). Then, when he wins the lawsuit, apparently without consulting any form of basic scientist, botanist, entomologist, or apiologist, realizes that without bees, all plants on earth will die. Hey, how about that? Days later, they manage to re-pollenate the entire earth's stock of withering plants with a stolen Parade of Roses float. Also, he sues Sting (voiced by Sting) because of his vaguely bee-themed stage name. Hooray!

One of the most striking things to me was the choice of Jerry Seinfeld as the main character and hero. It's surprisingly brilliant in some ways, and completely bizarre in others. I've always felt that Seinfeld was words and a voice. On his long-running sitcom, he was, without a doubt, the least physical of all the main performers. He was quick with the quips, but when it came to delivering laughs with a movement, expression, or gesture, he almost always fell flat, seeming staged, stilted, and generally unconvincing. Placing all the emphasis on the voice, and allowing talented animators make the gestures and facial expressions was a genius move. My favorite moment in the movie is when he first discovers Ray Liotta's special brand of honey. He hovers there, hands up, with a "Wha-buh-huh-guh?" expression on his face. In the real world, he could never have pulled that off.

As par for the course in family films, this one is filled with vague "adult" jokes, to make it more palatable for the adults that are invariable dragged to these things by gaggles of screeching, grabby little germ-machines known as children. The movie starts out with a very strong sense of "Work is kind of for suckers, huh?" Apparently, in this universe, bees work in a complicated and efficient Rube Goldberg-esque hive-themed carnival, and must choose one job to do for the rest of their tiny little lives. There's also an idea of insect time-dilation (three days of high school, three days of college, but thank the BeeJesus that he took that day in between to bum around), but once Barry leaves the hive and starts flirting with human Vanessa (voiced by Renée Zelwegger), this time compression idea vanishes.

Speaking of Vanessa and Barry, they share a number of vaguely unsettling and disquieting scenes of intimacy, where one can't help but wonder the ramifications of such a logistically improbably trans-species relationship. Several characters nonchalantly refer to her as his "girlfriend," and his friend Adam (voiced by Matthew Broderick) even states that they "make out." Thank BeeJesus that Barry vehemently denies this accusation, though longs deep in his heart of hearts that it were true.

The voice acting is spot on, especially by the more minor characters. Rip Torn plays a diminutive drill sergeant to the "Pollen Jocks," the squadron of bees that acquire pollen. Patrick Warburton plays Vanessa's human boyfriend Ken, with his classic deep-voiced exuberance with a slight tinge of insanity. Larry Miller plays some strange bee mayor-figure, and it's difficult to explain why it's so great. There's even an appearance by Larry King, as "Bee Larry King," where Barry points out that there's a nearly identical version of Larry King in the human word, in a strange scene absolutely stuffed with meta-references. Unfortunately, there are several jokes that are poorly set up, fall flat, and simply don't deliver (a scene that sets up an especially poor "Drag Queen" pun comes cringingly to mind).

Bee Movie sadly lacks much of what we should really look for in an animated movie. The characters and plot are wild and underdeveloped, and don't seem to follow any sort of set path. Despite the initial message of "Why work so hard for the hive blah blah blah," it eventually reverses itself, telling about "Hey, guess what, nevermind, if you don't do what you're supposed to be doing, the entire ecosystem will break down and life could end as we know it!" Eventually, we're all doomed to succumb to the swelling tide of the working world. Plus, we'll have to listen to Jerry Seinfeld's screeching pseudo-anxious voice most of the time while we're at it.

Meh, three out of five. I'm being pretty generous with that; it's not as good as Disney movies, or other Dreamworks films, but ... yeah, it's just not as good.