Nine

Since I am sitting here wondering how this movie could even have been made (by Rob Marshall) and how its actors could have agreed to be in it (details below), it boggles my mind even more how anybody could have liked it.

Not knowing where to begin with my long list of complaints, let me start with the plot or lack of it.  Daniel Day Lewis interprets Maestro Contini, a film director slightly past his prime who is trying within the movie we are watching to direct a movie called Italia.  The rest of the crew includes Marion Cotillard as his wife, Penelope Cruz as his mistress, Judi Dench as his costume designer, Nicole Kidman as his muse, Kate Hudson as an American fashion editor, Fergie as a prostitute from his childhood, and Sophia Loren as his mother.  If you don't have a headache already you can read on.

It is beyond me why DDL was chosen as the lead actor as his Italian accent sounded phony to me throughout and I could noticeably hear the Irish in it on many occasions.  Why couldn't they choose somebody who spoke Italian?  He is a great actor, no doubt, but not the right one for this role.  All of the other accents were terrible too, and worst of all were the songs and their lyrics.  The dances were pointless, laughable, fake, and overdone to the point that the women didn't even look remotely sexy.  The singing parts were long and painful to listen to, the dancing painful to watch.

DDL struggles throughout the film with lack of inspiration and script and it seems Nine has the exact same problem.  What was this movie even about?  Marion Cotillard's performances were the only redeeming bits of this movie.  She played quite well, as did Penelope Cruz as DDL's rejected mistress.  All the others were just stereotypical disasters. 

I am not a big fan of musicals to begin with but this was a serious waste of two hours.  I watched it without Fabio because I knew it would be bad but it was actually worse than I thought.  Certainly not a NINE!  

My rating: 2.5/10