Based on the 2005 student film of the same name this “stitch-punk” represents the first full length commercial film from director Shane Acker. As I understand it the short it was based on was Acker's final project at uni and it won some awards got various people with cash interested and so was turned into a feature length film. Since this is from someone no one has heard of they attached Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (of wanted and nightwatch/daywatch fame) as producers in order they could fling their names about.

The film tells the story of the titular 9 voiced by Elijah Wood who is a sort of robot doll thing made from a Hessian sack and bits of old copper pipes. He wakes up alone in a post apocalyptic world where for some reason bodies don't decay. He meets another of his kind 2 (voiced by Martin Landau) an old robot out scavenging but the two of them soon run into trouble and 2 is taken away by the beast a sort of robot dog thing.

9 eventually meets the others of his kind who mostly live under the rule of the curmudgeonly 1 (voiced by Christopher Plummer) who is their self appointed leader. He doesn't want to risk trying to rescue 2 so 9 and 5 (voiced by John C. Reilly) set off to do it themselves.

The graphic style of this film is somewhere between a steam-punk movie and something pixar might turn out if they were feeling a bit apocalyptic. The colours are browns and greys the landscape decimated and full of decaying ruins. It's very well put together in the visuals the characters with their little doll bodies and stitched together fabric and the various sets all normal places but shot from the perspective of the small doll like characters. The animation is pretty top notch.

As far as the story goes it's relatively straight forward there's not a lot there to engage what there is can be a bit thin. It does feel like a clever idea that would work as a short stretched to try and fill feature length.

The voice acting is passable but none of the characters really leap out at you, they are a bit caricatures, the old man set in his ways, the young unready hero, the spunky female love interest, and so on. It feels like those involved where basically phoning it in but given what they had to work with it's hard to say.

The sound track is ok it does the job. Again it doesn't really stand out.

All in all it's a nice film one that is worth seeing for it's visuals but don't expect the level of story and character that you would get from something like a pixar film.

Since this is his first work I guess we can forgive Mr Acker a fair amount it does show promise at least from a visual style point of view hopefully if he continues to do work he will improve on the story and character aspects of the craft.

It's an interesting film looks wonderful but a bit thin in area's of story and character.

Hello again - its been some time since I've gone to the cinema, through a combination of work and maths. This review in particular might be a little short, as due to a battery miscalculation my laptop is out of action and I'm typing this on my phone

9 (not Nine, that's a completely different film also out this year. Confusing? I think so...) is an animated film set in a post-apocalyptic world with animate hessian doll sized robots as the cast. The animation is very good, realistic in a stylised, slightly cartoonish way. Some shots reminded me a little of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

The film opens with the construction and awakening of the main character, 9. In short order he meets up with 2 (they each have a number on their backs) and the plot kicks off.

You'll note there aren't many details here - the problem is that there is only a small amount of plot to go around and to use some up in a review would only compound the problem. That is not to say that what there is is bad, more that it could have been done in less time without much impact.

The casting is good and it all hangs together well, and its certainly enjoyable and very pretty, but its not really outstanding overall