Nine

Rob Marshall clearly loves the stage, which is all well and good, except for the fact that his chosen career path has him playing the role of a film director. Marshall got his start directing and choreographing musical theatre shows, but he turned to directing movies earlier in this decade with his Oscar-winning adaptation of Chicago. Since then, Marshall has set his sights firmly on film. He took a brief break from musicals with his 2006 adaptation of Arthur Golden's book Memoirs of a Geisha, but he has now returned to the genre he knows best with his star-studded adaptation of Nine. Marshall has obviously had big success with this kind of movie in the past, but unfortunately, he seems to be under the delusion that he is back to working on the stage.

Somebody should really remind Rob Marshall that he's directing a motion picture, because this whole notion of a camera and being able to edit the footage later on seems to really elude him. Despite shooting much of Nine on location in various areas of Italy, Marshall has stubbornly (actually, stupidly would be more accurate) opted to shoot the majority of the movie's musical numbers on a dull sound stage bathed in blatantly theatrical light. The result is like watching a gaudy theatre production through a window. The vibrant energy of a live performance is completely missing from the movie version of Nine, which is trapped in some decrepitly cramped space between the stage and the screen.

But Marshall apparently thought that there was an even more frustrating way of displaying the musical sequences. In several cases, he intercuts the musical footage with a separate scene that often involves two people having a conversation. The idea is that the musical sequence is occurring within the imagination of a character, who is using the power of imagined music to free them from the real world's stuffy grasp. The problem is that the musical sequences would be far more interesting to watch if they were actually shot on those Italian streets and beaches that pass for the real world. Not only that, but the heavily edited musical sequences are hideously choppy and the cutting back and forth between conversation and singing is disgustingly distracting.

Under Marshall's stupefying direction, Nine is a lame little musical movie in desperate need of a considerably cinematic directorial vision. The movie's overall failure as both a musical and a piece of fluffy entertainment is bad enough when taken at face value, but when you consider that the story is based on Fellini's Italian classic 8 ½ and that the movie is intended as a sort of homage to Fellini's work, Marshall's blunder is all the more embarrassing. Nobody could expect Marshall to match Fellini's style, but surely an homage should be somewhat flattering. This jumbled mess is more of an insult to Fellini than a giddy pat on the back.

Fellini's movies often painted an intoxicating portrait of a glitzy Italian dream world where the men were all smoothly suave and the women were all uniquely gorgeous. The seductive qualities of movies like 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita owe much to the tone and flavour of Fellini's narrative landscape. The places look and feel like they would be exciting to visit and the people seem like pleasantly friendly individuals with a grand sense of fun. There is nothing resembling the tonal beauty of Fellini's work in Marshall's version of Nine and, despite the impressive pedigree of the cast, none of the characters are particularly interesting.

Chameleonic actor Daniel Day Lewis plays Guido, a popular film director facing a crisis of inspiration when a nasty case of writer's block threatens to stall production on his latest movie. Complicating matters is the maelstrom of lust and lies that defines his many relationships with the women in his life. There is Guido's wife (Marion Cotillard), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his star (Nicole Kidman), his mother (Sophia Loren), and his costume designer (Judi Dench). There is even a Vogue magazine writer (Kate Hudson) and a beach-dwelling prostitute who populates one of Guido's favoured memories (Fergie).

It's a large cast with a colossal amount of talent, but none of the actors are given much to do throughout the movie's nearly two hour running time. Each of the stars are awarded a musical number that showcases their singing abilities, but the forgettable songs and Marshall's flatfooted direction fail to shine the spotlight on any of the actors. There is some enjoyment in seeing such charismatic stars as Kidman, Cruz, and Cotillard parade around in the same movie, but the pleasure of watching so much talent strut their collective stuff is drowned by the thought of how engaging this group could be if they all appeared in a movie that was actually good.

The actors are ultimately upstaged by the somewhat horrifying trio of dopey directing, flaccid photography, and egregious editing. Cinematographer Dion Beebe seems to suffer from the safe affliction that has clearly befallen Marshall and so he blasts big, overpowering lights onto the overused set in most of the musical numbers. The lights are often visible in the various sequences, a creative decision that marks yet another attempt to convey the theatre-going experience. Beebe's photography stifles every image and robs the big sequences of anything resembling visual depth. Editors Claire Simpson and Wyatt Smith fare no better, having hacked the film stock to bits, leaving themselves with a pile of musical numbers that are messily truncated and completely devoid of lyrical flow.

Watching Nine is a frustrating experience, because the iconic cast deserves so much more than they are given and Rob Marshall is stuck on auto-pilot. The music is quite unimpressive and tackling an homage to Fellini brings along its own set of unique challenges, but there is still the possibility that Nine could have at least achieved an enjoyable level of fun if a better director was involved. Marshall's vision is focused on the stage when he should be looking at the screen. All of his directorial decisions seem to arrive from a very lazy place, as if he couldn't muster up enough interest in his job to exercise his imagination. Nine is dull and lifeless, a movie masquerading as a stage show that awkwardly gives birth to a hiccupping hybrid, uncomfortably yearning to be put out of its misery.