Nine is such a curious piece of a meddling mess of a film, it’s a headache to sort out. Certainly, the pedigree for an Academy Award run is apparent in its casting, with big names like Penelope Cruz, Sophia Loren, former Oscar winners Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman, who won an Oscar before with this film’s director, Rob Marshall. Marshall’s success with previous musical films, should have and did, give this film some instant prestige. Nine is based on Tony Award-winning Broadway production, based on Federico Fellini’s masterpiece 8 1/2. What must have worked for the play, makes this film stilted, a constant problem, and I don’t doubt that many will find this down right dull.

I personally don’t think knowing about Fellini and the French New Wave movement will increase one’s appreciation in Nine. The film is pretty straight forward. This Fellini-like director named Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), is facing a midlife crisis that is hurting his creativity and his marriage. Through a series of meetings with various women in his life: lovers, his wife, and his constant actress of choice (Nicole Kidman), pressure from his producers forces him into making a picture regardless if it’s even possible for him to do so.

This mirrors Fellini’s own turmoil prior to filming his most personal film in 8 1/2, a film so loved by critics, film fanatics, and film students, but here in Nine, the film glides to its obvious conclusion. Did Nine need to be another 8 1/2? No, and it’s a-okay Marshall didn’t strive to serve that notion. Daniel Day-Lewis is one of our most intense actors, and when the film calls time-out to the musical aspects, the dramatic scenes are top-notch. But the film is a musical, so these elements must be addressed. Sadly, these elements aren’t as inventive as Marshall is noted for. They’re flat and stagy. I’m quite sure the Broadway play cast actors who are skilled in singing and dancing. Now, all are game, and Penelope Cruz and Stacy Ferguson offer up plenty of oozing sex appeal, but they do little to excite the flat feeling to the film. Day-Lewis is decent, but hardly is sipping from Raul Julia’s milk shake from the Tony Award winning play, in terms of singing and dancing.

So what’s Nine without the musical elements? A decent film, but it is a musical and most of the staged numbers aren’t very catchy and weigh the film’s pacing down. I can’t help but have this incredible letdown feeling from a film based on an acclaimed show, based on one of cinema’s well-known artists, who might just have used the film’s opening line to describe the film: “a film is killed by talking about it”. Try singing about it.

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Tags: 8 1/2, Daniel Day-lewis, Nine