Based on Fellini's renowned masterpiece 8 1/2 and starring a grand total of six Academy Award winners, one Academy Award nominee - and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas - is Rob Marshall's Nine, a musical with surely the perfect recipe for success. Well, not quite as it turns out. Despite the big names of Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard turning in fine performances, it just goes to show that great actors don't necessarily guarantee great movies.
Nine suffers throughout from a desperate lack of memorable tunes, only Fergie's belting rendition of 'Be Italian' really gets the toes tapping. Her thundering vocals, in fact, also serve to highlight that whilst the rest of the cast can all carry a tune, they're hardly natural fits for show tunes. And Marshall shows a severe lack of imagination integrating these numbers into the narrative - each occurs on an empty sound stage inside director Guido Contini's (Day-Lewis) mind, which is an oddly distancing device. It's sadly ironic that for a film whose narrative and inspiration is so deeply embedded in the machinations of cinema, this production clearly belongs (and should have stayed) on the stage.
Verdict - Lots of stars on the screen, not so many at the bottom of the review.
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