These days Pixar movies often sum up everything that’s missing from Disney’s mainstream releases – plot, characters you can root for, a distinct lack of songs about dreaming/the pain of being Miley Cyrus.
If only the two studios had linked up earlier…
We don’t normaly do straight to DVD fare here at STS (unless it’s a really gnarly gore-fest of course), but until Ryan Reynolds decides to show us his ring there’s a distinct lack of superpowered action on screens at the moment, and DC’s animation department is currently firing them out like a lone baby rocketing away from an exploding planet, so we figured we’d take a look.
And anyway, it’s my blog and I like comic books, so balls to you….
Ah Dreamworks, will you never learn? While rivals Pixar continue to leap ahead of the pack with sky high concepts and sublime characterisation, Dreamworks seems satisfied to churn out slapstick/Scottish accent mash-ups that – ahem – drag on…
Hi! I’m James Cameron, but you can call me Big Jimbo. You may remember me from such movies as Piranha II. I’d like to tell you about the dangers of climate change..and..erm..the plight of the Native American..or something..and I’d like to do t through the medium of animated nuclear explosions! Fuck Yeah!
Adapted from Shane Acker’s own 2005 Oscar-nominated animated short, 9 is a weighty slab of CG sci fi that owes more to Alexander Reynolds than Pixar, bright colours and loveable characters replaced with grim, menacing situations and a serious lack of laughs. Indeed, it even seems dark for producer Tim Burton; stripped of the dry, moribund humour that characterised Batman and particularly Beetlejuce, this is very much Acker’s baby, and a very unhappy one at that.
