9

Dolls are coming to life?!?!?! Sure, it sounds like a good idea if you are trying to bring Barbie to life, but when G.I. Joe or Darth Vader catch wind of this plan, it could get ugly, especially if they enlist the Cabbage Patch Kids!

In this animated spectacular, Elijah Wood provides the voice of 9 - a small doll who has achieved self-awareness and finds himself alive in a post-apocalyptic world. While wandering around and trying to figure out what is happening all around him, 9 runs into a similar doll, 2 (Martin Landau), but they are attacked by a monster robot, who takes 2 away to some sort of foreboding factory out in the distance. Once 9 starts to meet others like him - dolls who have come to life and have numbers instead of names - he proposes they rescue 2, but the leader, 1 (Christopher Plummer), doesn't want anyone venturing out and attracting the attention of these robots.

When 9 disobeys, will he find 2?

Will he discover why these robots are after them?

Why and how are the dolls alive?

9 is one of the most visually interesting movies of the year. Much in the style of The Nightmare Before Christmas (also produced by 9 producer Tim Burton), this movie captures the viewer's attention with amazing textures and colors, but not with the kind of Technicolor splendor you might first think of when considering the word spectacular.

It’s a dark, dank movie with grays, blacks, smoky fogs and bombed out buildings that evoke the feeling of World War II-era Europe complete with a backstory about how a Hitler-like dictator may have brought about the world's demise. 9 is stunning in its bleakness as the audience is transported to this hopeless world, but the audience is not left in despair at all times.

Writer Pamela Pettler (based on director Shane Acker's short film by the same name) walks a very fine line, since 9 appeals to a harsher, almost Goth sensibility, instead of a happy Disney-friendly crowd. 9 is set in a world of death, doom and destruction (no Little Mermaid singing tunes about love in this one). However, while the movie is billed as a battle between good and evil in all of the commercials you see playing on TV, it also is a battle between hope and fear, which is brought to life in the struggle between 9 and 1. Pettler includes enough of this optimism to keep 9 from becoming a downer, and Acker never forgets explicitly to show the danger these characters face.

Unfortunately, 9 is half of a great movie (does that mean it should be called 4.5?). Pettler and Acker don't quite have enough material to make a full fledged movie, since, about two-thirds of the way through 9, you get the sense we have hit the climax. The audience is presented a neat, tidy ending, but 9 continues beyond that in what feels a bit like a rehash of the first part of the movie, which already is simple and more about action than story.

While 9 might get the attention of some younger children, it is a movie for kids 11 or 12 years old and up. We see several dead bodies throughout the movie, the heroes face some massive life and death situations, and one of our doll characters seems to be using a magnet essentially to get high, which might be hard to explain to an inquisitive young one (even though Grandma and Grandpa might have tried the magnet idea in the 60's).

9 is one to check out, especially if you want something that is more of an animated surprise.

9 is rated PG-13 for violence and scary images.