Movie Review: Nine

Nine, starring the incredible Daniel Day Lewis as the Italian director, Guido Contino, is really quite the mess. It almost borders on embarrassing. Actually, it is embarrassing. Lewis is amazing but miscast. Even with his perfect thick Italian accent, he cannot save this film. It’s a musical and he cannot sing a note, not one. I hope I’m not the only person who thought he sounded like The Count from Sesame Street. When it comes out On Demand (and believe me, it will be out of the theater and On Demand in a minute), watch it. Tell me he doesn’t sound like The Count? The paper thin plot goes like this: Contino is a great Italian director but his creative well has run dry. His recent projects have been less then successful and his critics are quick to mention it anytime it is announced that he is about to go behind the camera. Contino has just publicized his greatest project ever…a love story to his home country, simply entitled “Italia!” There’s only one thing keeping him from filming his masterpiece…..he hasn’t written it yet. For inspiration he turns his thoughts to the various women who have influenced his life: his wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard), his star, Claudia (Nicole Kidman), his mistress, Carla (Cruz), his costume creator Lilli (Judi Dench), a star struck reporter (Kate Hudson), his late mother, played by the still magnificent at 75, Sophia Loren. Even the town prostitute from his childhood played by Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas shows up and sings a song. She, by the way, has a tremendous set of pipes. Cotillard and Fergie provide the most entertainment in this very lame production. If you take away the songs (most of them are dreadful anyway), you are left with precious little. On the up-side; the Italian seaside setting is spectacular to look at and provides a welocme but only momentary, distraction. Nine is an adaptation of the Broadway musical, which itself was adapted from Federico Fellini’s Oscar winning film, 8 ½. It runs for one hour and fifty minutes. Short by today’s standards but it seemed like an eternity. Skip it. Ugh!