NINE

Director Rob Marshall tackles another Tony-winning musical, filling the song-and-dance roles with glamorous Hollywood-types. Except this time his source material is not as rich as his previous Oscar-winner Chicago. And that doesn't bode well for Nine.

It's 1960s Italy, and famed director Guido (Daniel Day-Lewis) has writer's block. Unfortunately he has already announced his next film, starring his muse (Nicole Kidman), and thrown a vague press conference where he charmed his way out of saying anything specific about the plot that he hasn't even come up with yet. His film crew is poised and ready to begin working, as soon as he says the word... except no one knows what that word will be, and if it will even happen. In the meantime, Guido whiles away the time, musing about the influential women in his life, including his mistress (Penélope Cruz), his wife (Marion Cotillard), his mother (Sophia Loren), his friend (Judi Dench), a flirty American journalist (Kate Hudson), and a seductive mystery woman from his childhood (Fergie).

And that is pretty much it.

It may be dull to watch someone writing in a movie, but it is just as dull watching someone with writer's block. In the meantime, we are expected to assume that Guido is as desirous and charming as all of these beautiful women claim him to be... otherwise would he even be worth singing about? Guido walks around, scrawny and hunched over, wearing sunglasses, scurrying along not wanting to be noticed. The lure is, of course, that he is a super-famous director during a most stylish cinematic time--but without that context, he just seems a bit weaselly to have to fend off the desperate advances of such scathingly hot women as Cruz and Cotillard.

Nine is based on Fellini's famous 1960s Italian classic 8 1/2, starring Marcello Mastroianni who played a character based on Fellini himself... a director with writer's block who escapes into fantasy while trying to come up with the idea for his next movie. I can see why that may be an intriguing framework for a musical, but for someone like myself unfamiliar with the Broadway version, I found the songs in the movie to be uninspiring and forgettable. Despite the enthusiastic go-go dancing of Kate Hudson, or the lingerie-clad writhing of Penelope Cruz, I honestly can't remember the songs. Part of the problem is that these women are actors, not trained singers. This is not their fault, of course, and they aren't bad at all. But it probably isn't an accident that the only song that stood out as one that you might hum later was Fergie's "Be Italian"... because, well, Fergie is a professional singer.

So it is up to these ladies, then, to at least try to act with the material given them. The only ones that manage to rise above the material are Cruz, as Guido's on-the-side lover, and Cotillard, as Guido's on-the-side wife. Guido treats both of these women terribly, so their characters at least have some genuine hurt to work with. Cotillard, especially, manages to be moving, singing yet another song that I can't remember at all. But she is the best thing about the movie. And, unfortunately, as I didn't really like the movie, that isn't saying much.