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Nine — film review.

The disappointments in "Nine" are many, from a starry cast the film ill uses to flat musical numbers that never fully integrate into the dramatic story. The only easy prediction is that "Nine" is not going to revive the slumbering musical film genre.

By Kirk Honeycutt , The Associated Press December 4, 2009 12:00am

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Any number of movies have served as the basis for stage musicals — even “Gone With the Wind” was bravely attempted, though with predictable results. But it’s fairly unusual and probably not a good idea to bring such musicals back into their original medium. One of the rare instances when it did work was Federico Fellini’s “Nights of Cabiria,” which turned into a Broadway tuner, “Sweet Charity” (by Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields), and then became a pretty terrific Bob Fosse musical film. So understandably, the Weinstein Co. and a host of producers thought lightning might strike twice with Fellini’s ” 8 1/2,” which inspired the Tony-winning 1982 musical “Nine.” Lightning does not strike the same place twice.

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The disappointments here are many, from a starry cast the film ill-uses to flat musical numbers that never fully integrate into the dramatic story. The only easy prediction is that “Nine” is not going to revive the slumbering musical-film genre. Boxoffice looks problematic, too, but moviegoers are going to be enticed by that cast, and the Weinstein brothers certainly know how to promote a movie. So modest returns are the most optimistic possibility.

Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece takes you inside a man’s head. Because he happens to be a movie director, his daydreams and recollections are visually striking, but more to the point, you sense, through the nightmares of an artist blocked from his own creativity, everything that is going on inside this man. In “Nine,” written by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella, you get a tired filmmaker with too many women in his life and not enough movie ideas.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Guido Contini, and to his credit, it’s not Marcello Mastroianni’s Guido but a new character, more burnt out than blocked and increasingly sickened by his womanizing.

Despite the English language, the film insists it still is 1965 Rome, where black-and-white, Cinecitta Studios, Vespas, Ray-Bans and all things Italian reign in the world of fashion and Western culture. A new Guido Contini movie is about to start production, but no script exists. In despair, Guido flees to a seaside spa. Within a day, his mistress (Penelope Cruz, all legs and pleading libido), demanding producer, production team and then his wife (Marion Cotillard, unable to adapt well to misery) take up residence in the small town.

Sad romantic trysts and unproductive production meetings ensue. In his imagination, all the women of his life, from his mother (a rather saintly Sophia Loren) to that whore (Stacy Ferguson, better known as Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas) on the beach from his childhood materialize. Each has her production number. Then, the numbers done, the movie returns to dreary melodrama.

Under Rob Marshall’s awkward direction, it really is that segmented: melodrama, song, melodrama, song. The musical numbers clearly take place on a huge stage (at the U.K.’s Shepperton Studios), while the rest of the movie ostensibly occurs in Italy, though it often looks pretty stage-bound, too.

Marshall’s film musical “Chicago” won the Oscar for best film, but one wonders why, when the musical numbers were all pieced together in such tiny cuts, one rarely caught anybody singing or dancing for long. Marshall is up to old tricks here as the numbers are all a matter of edits, zooms and multiple angles. His actors sing pretty damn well, but none is a dancer, so he has to disguise this in every number.

Maury Yeston’s music and lyrics are serviceable but often seem out of touch with the emotions Guido or his many women are experiencing. Marshall, who choreographs with John DeLuca, uses them to slam down high-concept, intricately staged Broadway numbers that interrupt action in this Italian seaside town.

Nicole Kidman as Guido’s “muse” and Kate Hudson as an on-the-make American journalist get to do little. Judi Dench is wonderful and wise as Guido’s costume designer-cum-therapist and, fortunately, is not asked to do much in terms of singing and dancing.

Fergie is kind of fun as a childhood fantasy of sexuality — in the original film, the whore is fat and slovenly. Cruz and Cotillard get real characters to play, but they’re the stuff of bad soap opera.

Then there’s Day-Lewis. He is an incredibly sexy man and performs all the right moves. The problem is, he keeps performing those same moves over and over, so one experiences not so much artistic angst but a guy trying to sober up from a two-week binge. Sporting a scruffy beard and running a hand through long hair only goes so far.

With “Nine,” one never gets inside the protagonist’s head. So one can’t decide whether his problem is too many women or too many musical numbers breaking out for no reason.

Opens: Dec. 18 (the Weinstein Co.) Production companies: Relativity Media, Marc Platt Prods. Rated PG-13, 117 minutes

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Nine Reviews

There’s only so much machismo an audience can take

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 28, 2023

I adored this!

Full Review | Feb 20, 2022

Feels as if this filmmaker doesn't know a Fellini from a linguini.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Mar 19, 2020

Nine cannot help but be a limp facsimile of a film that is so full of life and brio.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Oct 12, 2019

It's just so visually stunning and beautiful and different that I think that if you're an animation fan it's definitely one that you should have seen.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 13, 2019

You'd be hard-pressed to find a better cast in any film this year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 21, 2018

Day-Lewis shows a previously unseen penchant for song and dance. Cruz, though, is the real star turn with a very sexy number. But in parts it's flat, and some more melodrama or plot would not have gone amiss.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2018

It's a funny and not the least bit disingenuous moment that speaks to both the power of good storytelling to draw in people regardless of creed, and to the power glamor has over even the most ascetic individuals

Full Review | Oct 8, 2018

While Fellini pondered the possibilities of sin and redemption, Nine 's all-singing, all-dancing, all-laughing remake proffers a mindless celebration of capital S (as in silly ) sin.

Full Review | Aug 3, 2018

Though the film is uneven, it is worth seeing for the good parts. Daniel Day-Lewis does a credible job.

Full Review | Jan 16, 2018

Though it wasn't the best movie musical, Nine certainly had its moments.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Sep 11, 2017

A painfully formulaic message, trite dialogue, and a strangely episodic narrative structure that renders the whole thing exhausting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Apr 12, 2016

It's an over-the-top, eye-popping musical that doesn't completely satisfy, especially compared to it's original source classic.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 11, 2015

Largely, the numbers just sit on top of the dramatic action, adding little to our understanding of the characters and seldom contributing to the advancement of the story.

Full Review | Sep 24, 2014

What we get is a film that is close in story to Fellini's film, but which needed more time for its actresses and better music to make it all worthwhile.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 24, 2012

Day-Lewis, over-egging the angst as well as the Eye-talian accent, is charmless and insufferable. But the person you really want to slap is Marshall, whose brash directing style simply doesn't suit Nine's more whimsical charms.

Full Review | Jul 30, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 14, 2012

A migraine-inducing maelstrom.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

It has a lot to gnaw on, but it's worth gnawing on.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 11, 2011

Sensual musical about love and art has mature themes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 31, 2010

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W ith La dolce vita in 1960, Federico Fellini created a new kind of personal fantastical movie to deal with the corrupt, newly affluent Italy. It replaced the neorealism that had dominated Italian cinema for 15 years. Three years later, in the even more phantasmagoric, semi-autobiographical Otto e mezzo (aka 8½ ), Marcello Mastroianni, who'd become Fellini's alter ego in La dolce vita , played Guido Anselmi, a director at the end of his tether while in pre-production on his latest expensive movie at Rome's Cinecittà.He has magnificent sets and costumes, but no script, and as he's badgered by producers, wives, mistresses, journalists and assorted hangers-on, he fantasises about his life and loves and revisits his past.

It is a dazzling film, funny, moving and deeply serious. One of the most influential pictures ever made, it contributed to the myth of the film director as supreme auteur, encouraged a movie critic to publish a book of interviews with the dubious title The Film Director as Superstar and convinced moviemakers the world over that the true subject matter of films was the creator's own struggle.

Among the disastrously self-indulgent and now largely forgotten movies it inspired were Anthony Newley's Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969) and Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland (1970), which some wit called "One and a Half". Rather better were two pictures made in the late 70s, Woody Allen's Stardust Memories and Bob Fosse's All That Jazz .

Then came the musical Nine , drawing directly on Fellini's film, starring Raul Julia as a slightly renamed director Guido Contini, which ran for nearly two years on Broadway. It only crossed the Atlantic 10 years later, when it was given a concert performance with Jonathan Pryce at the Royal Festival Hall and a small-scale production starring Larry Lamb at the Donmar Warehouse.

Now we have a rather grand film by Rob Marshall, director of Chicago , with Arthur Kopits's original script considerably reworked by Anthony Minghella and Michael Tolkin and a fine, thoughtful performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, who sings well and moves gracefully as Guido.

It's enjoyable, but lighter, slighter and a good deal less offensive to feminists than Fellini's film, and lacks the pain and personal intimacy of 8½ . Much of it was shot in Italy, and all of Maury Yeston's songs, some quite spectacularly staged, are sung in the minds of the various characters, the only exception being an old Italian pop number performed by a nightclub singer. Guido and each of the women in his life – played by Judi Dench (his costume designer), mother (Sophia Loren), wife (Marion Cotillard), favourite star (Nicole Kidman), latest groupie (Kate Hudson), mistress (Penélope Cruz) – has a good number.

All the songs were unfamiliar to me and moderately tuneful, though I didn't leave the cinema humming them, and the lyrics are not exactly in the Stephen Sondheim class. I did, however, like Kate Hudson's tribute to the style of Italian cinema that contains this couplet: "The things I love to see/ From Guido's POV."

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Content Caution

In Theaters

• December 18, 2009
• Daniel Day-Lewis as Guido Contini; Marion Cotillard as Luisa Contini; Penélope Cruz as Carla; Nicole Kidman as Claudia; Judi Dench as Lilli; Kate Hudson as Stephanie; Sophia Loren as Mamma; Stacey Ferguson as Saraghina

Home Release Date

• May 4, 2010
• Rob Marshall

Distributor

• The Weinstein Company

Movie Review

Italian director Guido Contini is a moviemaking genius. And the world awaits his next cinematic masterpiece. That next movie, his ninth, is already in full production—the sets look great, the costumes sparkle.

There’s only one problem: Contini doesn’t have a clue what it will be about. There’s no script. No rough concept. Not a single idea.

The slick pro tries to keep everything under control. He dodges the press with jokes and sunglasses-clad style. He pats his producer on the back with nonchalant assurances. He flirts and seduces. But in private he writhes with an unexplained agony.

Drawing deeply on his cigarettes, he calls upon the long list of women who have always inspired him—his deceased Mamma among them, along with his passionate mistress, his demanding star, his ever-knowing costume designer, his patient, loyal wife.

And through dream-like moments and musical memories, the women share with him the failures, dalliances and betrayals that have made the self-absorbed director’s world revolve around him.

Contini slowly starts to realize that his distress isn’t over a failing movie, but a failed life.

Positive Elements

Guido Contini eventually understands that he’s selfish to the core. That he’s made stupid choices that have hurt the ones he loves most and led him to empty exhaustion. At one point he runs from a lover and pleads for a new start with his wife (before, of course, messing up once again).

In a vision Contini tells his mother, “I destroyed everything, Mamma.” When his mistress attempts suicide, he spends the night watching over her. And in doing so he’s again reminded of what he’s become and done as the woman’s doctor confronts him with, “I suppose you don’t consider yourself bound by morality.”

[ Spoiler Warning ] After driving his wife away, bailing on the movie and living in seclusion for two years, Contini finally meets up again with his good friend Lilli. He tells her of his lonely struggles and she encourages him to reinvest in his true talents and make another movie. He retorts, “The only movie I could make now is about a man trying to win back his wife.” “Sounds perfect!” Lilli exclaims.

Spiritual Elements

Contini sings of his desire for fame and power: “I would like to be Christ, Muhammad, Buddha—but not have to believe in God.” However, in the course of his emotional anguish he calls out, “Mother of God, give me a sign.”

The director gains an audience with a local Catholic cardinal and asks, “Do you believe in God?” The cardinal responds in the affirmative, but instead of directly addressing Contini’s obvious spiritual longings, he proceeds to tell the director about all the things that are wrong with his movies. “You should encourage Italian women to be wives not whores,” he says.

The director flashes back to another encounter with priests in his childhood: An angered priest whips the young Contini and says, “God will punish you for your sins, now and forever.” A magazine writer praises the director for how his movies have pointed out the “death of religion.” Contini counters, “I don’t think religion is dead.”

Sexual Content

Contini’s movies and life drip with amoral sexuality. And so, many of the musical numbers in Nine are populated with women slinking about in skimpy lingerie or highly sexualized, cleavage-revealing outfits. (Even his mother wears low-cut dresses.)

The director’s mistress, Carla, is one of the brasher characters in this respect. She sings a seductive, breast-cupping and backside-waving temptress song while clad in only a bustier and panties. The camera examines her closely. Dressed only in a towel that she opens (away from the camera), it’s implied that she and Contini have sex.

But she’s certainly not the only seductress prowling Contini’s sets. Another musical number features a 9-year-old Contini and a group of friends giving a prostitute a handful of coins to display herself. She obliges, pulling open her dress, cupping her (still somewhat covered) breasts and pinching her inner thigh. Her song expands to include other women in skimpy outfits.

Lilli, the costumer, sings about the Folies Bergère: Featured is a chorus of scantly clad feather dancers who have little more than glitter covering their breasts. The 9-year-old Contini romps around them. Writer Stephanie dances and sings a go-go number in hot pants and tassels. She strips to bra and panties when Contini comes up to her room.

One of the only female characters who shows much of any decorum, in fact, is Contini’s wife, Louisa. She’s usually classy and well-dressed. But even she ends up performing an angry song that turns into a striptease for a group of leering and lusting men. At song’s end she removes her top and the camera sees part of her breast from the side.

Sexuality even enters into Contini’s discussion with the cardinal as the director imagines a lounging bikini-clad woman caressing the cardinal’s shoulder. A musical number includes a nun in a habit—and cleavage-revealing dress. Contini draws a picture of a nude woman on a piece of paper.

Violent Content

Contini, as a child, is whipped with a thin rod for his sinful actions.

Crude or Profane Language

Several misuses of “Christ.” “H‑‑‑” and “a‑‑” populate dialogue or song lyrics a handful of times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Since the musical is set in the 1960s, cast members smoke on numerous occasions—in screening rooms, hotel lobbies, press meetings, etc. Contini is a perpetual cigarette smoker. The film’s producer smokes cigars. Contini and Stephanie share glasses of vodka. Diners drink wine and other alcohol.

Carla tries to kill herself (offscreen) with an overdose of pills.

Based on a Tony Award-winning musical that was inspired by Federico Fellini’s 1963 film 8 ½ , Nine can count among its accomplishments the idea of a creative man reaching for inspiration and finding the hard truth about himself.

That theme is positive and involving.

But the musical’s math when it comes to creativity often subtracts instead of multiplies. Marion Cotillard’s emotional portrayal of Contini’s wife through her plaintive song of longsuffering is underplayed but nothing short of brilliant. But aside for a few scenes such as that, the story, music and imagery don’t always blend well. The tale feels rather joyless. And there isn’t a single song you’ll be humming to yourself, or even much remember past the closing credits.

Far more significant than those failings, Fellini-esque, 1960s-style sexuality is poured on by the bucketful and leaves the pic awash in lusty visuals.

The cardinal’s assistant talks to Contini about his titillating movies, saying, “Publicly we condemn them. We must. But we all love them.”

Um, no, that’s not quite the right attitude.

More studied are A.O. Scott’s comments in The New York Times . “Straining to capture artistic frenzy, [ Nine ] descends into vulgar chaos,” he writes, “less a homage to Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (its putative inspiration) than a travesty.”

As Nine opens, Contini is talking about how difficult it is for a moviemaker to bring his dream to full cinematic fruition. He tells of all the bumps and potential potholes along the creative roadway—the screenplay, the actors, the edits—that can steal away a dream’s magic and leave it less than it was meant to be.

That speech, it turns out, is ironically apropos.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Nine Review

18 Dec 2009

117 minutes

After making the Oscar-winning, $300-million-making Chicago in 2002 and following up with the not-quite-so-popular Memoirs Of A Geisha, it perhaps comes as no surprise that Rob Marshall has returned to his musical wheelhouse for Nine, a 1982 Tony award-winning musical based on Federico Fellini’s Euro classic 8 1/2. As if to counter-balance the esoteric subject matter Marshal has assembled a stellar cast, seemingly designed to make poster designers scratch their heads trying to fit all the huge names in.

And, as you might expect, they all turn in excellent performances. Yes, Daniel Day-Lewis can sing, and dance, and even speak Italian (show-off), Kate Hudson is one hell of a dancer, Penelope Cruz can move in ways you never thought decent in a musical, Judi Dench can pull off a good tune, and Fergie (the Black Eyed Pea rather than the Duchess) absolutely nails the musical’s one guaranteed foot stomper, Be Italian. Oh, and Nicole Kidman can sing, but you knew that already.

But in amongst these first-rate turns there shines an even sparklier star in the form of Marion Cotillard, playing alienated wife Luisa to Day-Lewis’s charismatic yet uninspired film director, Guido. Enchanting and saddening in equal measure, Cotillard gracefully steals the show from under everyone’s noses, masterfully delivering the other two big numbers, the eye-watering ‘My Husband Makes Movies’ and the uncompromising belter Take It All.

Hudson’s Cinema Italiano also deserves a mention for injecting some pep into an otherwise sombre series of show tunes, brightening up the introspective mood that pervades as Guido falls out with his wife, mistress (Cruz) and muse (Kidman) in quick succession. Mid-life crises don’t lead to happy tunes, and adult themes of lust, infidelity, sexual maturity and the purpose of existence may leave the Mamma Mia! crowd somewhat perplexed.

Shooting and cutting his numbers like a dervish, Marshall undeniably has a gift in taking musical newcomers and making them shine. Yet his grip falters in its ambitious Fellini-esque time-shifting structure, the film awkwardly juggling black and white snapshots from Guido’s childhood with colourful musical numbers set on a huge stage.

Still, there’s tons to enjoy — the cool of ‘60s Rome is gorgeously evoked — and its desire to take the musical into different, more complex areas is to be applauded. And if it spawns further musical-art house crossovers — The Lives Of Others On Ice. Let The Right One Sing — then all the better.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Sensual musical about love and art has mature themes.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

A self-centered and self-indulgent film director c

Guido is tortured by the creative spirit. His arti

Some dance sequences feature aggressive movements,

Frequent sexual situations, but no nudity or love

Not much swearing, though some characters do refer

Characters (all adults) smoke cigarettes often and

Parents need to know that this beautifully filmed, all-star musical from the director of Chicago (and based on Federico Fellini's classic, albeit mature, film 8 1/2 ) follows a tortured-genius film director (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his interactions with a series of women (played by the likes of Penelope…

Positive Messages

A self-centered and self-indulgent film director careens through life, focusing all of his energies of the creative process and paying no attention to how his actions affect others, including his neglected wife, the mistress he takes for granted, and the many people involved in a major film project that can't move forward until he completes the script.

Positive Role Models

Guido is tortured by the creative spirit. His artistic impulses consume him, leaving him unable to manage the more mundane activities of his life, including remaining faithful to his wife or completing (or beginning, actually) the much-needed script for a major movie that's about to begin production. The film shows the dark side of genius and could make the life of an artist seem less than appealing to viewers who might otherwise harbor a bit of jealousy for such a glamorous lifestyle. On the up side, the movie features many strong female characters.

Violence & Scariness

Some dance sequences feature aggressive movements, but the effect is more dramatic than violent.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Frequent sexual situations, but no nudity or love scenes. Characters often discuss sex and desire, and many of the dance sequences feature women in skimpy costumes performing suggestive movements. One song focuses exclusively on a woman's desire for her partner and includes very racy lyrics and sexy motions.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Not much swearing, though some characters do refer to each other as "ass" and "whore." Also a few uses of exclamations like "hell" and "my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters (all adults) smoke cigarettes often and drink socially at parties and dinners.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this beautifully filmed, all-star musical from the director of Chicago (and based on Federico Fellini's classic, albeit mature, film 8 1/2 ) follows a tortured-genius film director ( Daniel Day-Lewis ) and his interactions with a series of women (played by the likes of Penelope Cruz , Nicole Kidman , Kate Hudson , and even Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas ) who've had an impact on his creative process. Though there's no actual sex or nudity, many of the songs focus on love, lust, and desire, and almost all of the dance numbers feature scantily clad dancers and suggestive lyrics/movements. There's also some smoking, drinking, and infrequent swearing. Younger viewers probably won't be able to fully appreciate the movie's mature themes related to relationships and creative challenges, but the cast may draw them in anyway. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 2 parent reviews

Strippers, sex, strippers...

Howd it get a pg13, what's the story.

Celebrated film director Guido Contini ( Daniel Day-Lewis ) has everyone on tenterhooks waiting for his next tour de force, Italia . A set has been built at the famed Cinecitta Studios in Rome, and his cast and crew are awaiting a script. But Guido is struggling; haunted by the "ghosts" of women past, he can't create the masterpiece that everyone's expecting. His mind wanders to memories of his beloved Mamma ( Sophia Loren ); of the prostitute ( Fergie ) he knew as a child; of his muse, the actress Claudia ( Nicole Kidman ); of his costume designer ( Judi Dench ); of a Vogue reporter looking to seduce him ( Kate Hudson ); of his mistress, Carla ( Penelope Cruz ); and of his long-suffering wife, Luisa ( Marion Cotillard ). An escape to the countryside only complicates matters further when both Carla and Luisa converge to support him ... followed by paparazzi and journalists hungering to know more. Will Guido's new movie, his ninth (hence the film's title), be a hit? Or will it even be made at all?

Is It Any Good?

It's a little unclear how an Irish actor wound up playing a tortured Italian director, but how lucky the audience is for it. NINE features Day-Lewis as we've rarely seen him: whimsical, unpredictable, prone to both rage and passion. He may not be exactly like Fellini's hero in 8 1/2 (on which this movie is based) -- nor the Guido of the acclaimed Broadway musical -- but no matter: Day-Lewis makes the character mesmerizingly distressed. He's writer's block writ large.

Still, fans of both the Broadway version and Fellini's classic may be disappointed. Some songs have been excised, and Guido's women are, by and large, not that fascinating, at least not in this version. Hudson's reporter is a trifle (and not in a way that serves the character); Cruz, though smoldering, is over the top; Kidman is fleeting. Cotillard is the exception, singing with such feeling -- and acting that way, too. It's lovely to see Loren on the big screen again, and Dench also delivers as a jaded costume designer. Nine may not score a perfect 10, but with its rousing numbers and some strong performances, it successfully entertains.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about creativity. How does Guido try to jump-start the artistic process? How do his struggles affect the people around him? Does it work?

What do you think about Guido's romantic entanglements? How does his wife feel about his obvious infidelity? Does he care?

How does the movie portray its female characters?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 18, 2009
• On DVD or streaming : May 4, 2010
• Cast : Daniel Day-Lewis , Marion Cotillard , Nicole Kidman , Penelope Cruz
• Director : Rob Marshall
• Inclusion Information : Gay directors, Female actors
• Studio : Weinstein Co.
• Genre : Musical
• Run time : 110 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sexual content and smoking
• Last updated : March 8, 2023

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Moulin Rouge

Musicals for Kids

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Rob Marshall’s flawed but frequently dazzling Nine is a hot-blooded musical fantasia full of song, dance, raging emotion and simmering sexuality. We get to watch British acting dynamo Daniel Day-Lewis be Italian as Guido Contini, a genius director of the swinging Sixties (ciao, Federico Fellini) struggling to put the movie in his head up on the screen. That movie concerns the women in his life — mother (Sophia Loren), wife (Marion Cotillard), muse (Nicole Kidman), mistress (Penélope Cruz), reporter (Kate Hudson), colleague (Judi Dench) and whore (Fergie). With an indisputably gifted actor playing ringmaster to such feminine life force, what’s not to like? You could argue that Nine , a 1982 Broadway hit spun off from Fellini’s own 1963 psychodrama, 8 1/2 , and revived in 2003, was never the equal of its source. But Maury Yeston composed a score of surpassing beauty. The challenge for Marshall, following his Oscar-winning Chicago , was to bring another hallucinatory musical to the screen without repeating himself or dimming the material’s blazing, untamed theatricality.

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By my score card, Marshall hits more than he misses. Those who hated his music-video editing in Chicago will hate it here. He errs by cutting three great songs (“Getting Tall,” “Be On Your Own,” “The Bells of St. Sebastian”) for three inferior ones. “Cinema Italiano,” sung by Hudson, is a tacky, overproduced misfire. He also shortchanges the influence of Catholicism on this man-child, and keeps Guido’s nine-year-old alter ego too much in the shadows. Otherwise, his work is visionary and electric. And the script, by Michael Tolkin and the late, much missed Anthony Minghella, is uncommonly witty. Guido begins the film at a press conference telling reporters that to talk about a movie is to spoil its mystery. So I won’t intrude except to say that Day-Lewis (who replaced an exhausted Javier Bardem) handles his two songs in high style and acts the role like the maestro he is, even if he looks as Italian as Big Ben.

The women are smashing. Kidman tosses off her big number (“Unusual Way”), but Fergie sells hers (“Be Italian”). Dench is a sassy delight. Cruz does wonders as the mistress, sizzling in a rope dance (“Who’s afraid to kiss your toes, I’m not”) and going on to break your heart when Guido breaks hers. Best of all is Cotillard as the wife, baring her soul in “My Husband Makes Movies” and her body in a new number (“Take It All”) that lets her throw the bum out. Cotillard, beautiful and bruising all at once, is perfection. As Marshall gathers his cast together for a finale with cinematographer Dion Beebe, costume whiz Colleen Atwood and production designer John Myhre working at their highest capacity, Nine fires on all cylinders. As Guido sings, “What’s a good thing for if not taking it to excess?” Prego .

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6 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.

By The New York Times

CRITIC’S PICK

Going ape for another ‘Apes’ movie.

‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’

The latest in this sci-fi series follows a group of rebels as they face off against an authoritarian ruler who has twisted the peaceful teachings of a previous leader.

From our review:

There’s a knowing sense that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again. That’s what makes “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” powerful, in the end. It probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over. What’s more, it points directly at the immense danger of romanticizing the past, imagining that if we could only reclaim and reframe and resurrect history, our present problems would be solved.

In theaters. Read the full review .

A thermal thriller that’s hot and cold.

‘aggro dr1ft’.

This hallucinatory romp directed by Harmony Korine conveys the journey of an assassin entirely through thermal imaging with added digital effects.

Whether it’s the thermal imaging or the augmentation, the visual style renders eyes practically invisible, leaving the actors without an important means of communication. … That absence might account for why “Aggro Dr1ft” is so unengaging on a narrative level, but the monotony might also have to have something to do with the protagonist, a hit man extraordinaire who is also (gasp) a family man. The world’s greatest assassin has been saddled with the world’s most sophomoric internal monologue. “I am a solitary hero. I am alone. I am a solitary hero. Alone,” he mumbles.

Think ‘On the Road,’ but for Gen-Z.

‘gasoline rainbow’.

Five teenagers embark on a road trip to a “party at the end of the world” and encounter many fellow misfits along the way in the latest from filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross.

There’s an uncommon sweetness to this film, which is less about running away from something and more about discovering the road of life is littered with goodness, if you know where to look. There’s a loose, languorous quality to “Gasoline Rainbow,” which the Rosses shot using a mostly improvised format, a collaboration between actors and filmmakers. It feels like a home movie, or a documentary — a capture of a slice of life in which there’s no plot other than whatever happens on the road ahead.

A destination wedding that goes nowhere.

‘mother of the bride’.

At a surprise last-minute wedding, the mother of the bride (Lana, played by Brooke Shields) gets another surprise when she discovers that her daughter is engaged to the son of her ex-beau, Will (Benjamin Bratt).

“Mother of the Bride” is directed by Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”) with an apparent allergy to verisimilitude. Early on, we are told that the opulent Thai ceremony will be bankrolled by Emma’s company (she’s an intern) and livestreamed to “millions of eyes.” These fantasies of pomp and circumstance often serve to make Lana and Will’s budding romance feel like a B-story to the action — although that may be a blessing when the best screwball gag this movie can muster is a pickleball shot to the groin.

Watch on Netflix . Read the full review .

Chris Pine goes off the deep end.

In Chris Pine’s directorial debut, he plays a pool cleaner who is enlisted to help uncover a mysterious water heist.

The sure-why-not plot, modeled on the California water grab in “Chinatown,” is less interesting than the charismatic cast that rambles along with Pine on his excellent adventure. Pine’s yarn was savaged when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but the sour response is a bit like getting mad at a golden retriever for rolling around in the grass.

Small drama, big stars.

Seeking asylum, a young Nigerian woman (Letitia Wright of “Black Panther”) navigates the complications of applying for permanent residency in Ireland in this drama from writer-director Frank Berry. Josh O’Connor of “Challengers” also stars.

At the beauty salon where she works, Aisha’s rightly cagey as she listens to her customers. But at the shelter, she turns warm, when she gives makeovers to fellow immigrants. As he did for his award-winning prison film, “Michael Inside,” Berry used nonprofessional actors with intimate experience of the system — here, Ireland’s International Protection Office, which processes asylum applications — he wanted to depict. It’s a gesture that keeps the film from lapsing into melodrama.

Bonus review: A rural throuple

It’s not immediately apparent how courtly intrigue figures in “A Prince” (in theaters) , Pierre Creton’s spellbinding French pastoral drama, though sex, death and domination hang palpably in the film’s crisp, Normandy air.

Creton looks to the divine powers and chivalric codes that fuel swords-and-shields epics like “Game of Thrones,” but whittles these elements down to a mysterious essence. Eventually, the film shifts into explicitly sexual and mythological terrain with a B.D.S.M. edge.

The story is slippery by design, loosely tracking the gay coming-of-age of an apprentice gardener, Pierre-Joseph. Throughout the film, a series of wordless and seductively austere tableaux, he forms bonds with various individuals in his rural community. Multiple narrators speak in retrospect, as if looking back from the afterlife at the characters onscreen.

Pierre-Joseph eventually comes to form a throuple with Alberto and Adrien, his mentors. The naked bodies of these much older gentleman appear suggestively weathered next to their younger lover’s sprightly form. Yet there is no mention of taboo. That passion could bloom in such spontaneous and unexpected forms is part of this enigmatic film’s potency.

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Movie Review: Brooke Shields and Benjamin Bratt deserve more than Netflix’s ‘Mother of the Bride’

This image released by Netflix shows Brooke Shields and Benjamin Bratt in a scene from “Mother of the Bride.” (Sasidis Sasisakulporn/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Chad Michael Murray and Brooke Shields in a scene from “Mother of the Bride.” (Sasidis Sasisakulporn/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Miranda Cosgrove, left, and Brooke Shields in a scene from “Mother of the Bride.” (Sasidis Sasisakulporn/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Brooke Shields and Rachael Harris in a scene from “Mother of the Bride.” (Sasidis Sasisakulporn/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Benjamin Bratt in a scene from “Mother of the Bride.” (Sasidis Sasisakulporn/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Sean Teale and Miranda Cosgrove in a scene from “Mother of the Bride.” (Sasidis Sasisakulporn/Netflix via AP)

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Romantic comedies are in a destination wedding rut. Perhaps it’s a collective post-COVID wanderlust kicking in, or, more cynically, some combination of tax credits and a place producers want to spend time. But between “ Ticket to Paradise ,” “Anyone But You,” “ Shotgun Wedding ” and now Netflix’s “ Mother of the Bride ,” the conceit is starting to curdle.

The problem is bigger than the setting, of course. There’s only so much heavy lifting a picturesque location, photogenic bodies and enviable resort outfits can do to make up for a lame story. Also, the appeal of an out-of-reach travelogue is limited in this age of influencers living wildly extravagant lifestyles around the clock on Instagram and TikTok (not to mention the sharp ways “White Lotus” has skewered and luxuriated in those worlds).

“Mother of the Bride,” now streaming on Netflix, wonders what might happen if you find out a few days before the wedding that your kid (Miranda Cosgrove) is marrying the offspring of the guy who broke your heart. That’s what happens to Brooke Shields’ Lana. She arrives in Phuket, Thailand, for her daughter’s wedding, meets the groom (Sean Teale), turns around and sees that his father is her college ex, Will (Benjamin Bratt). Barely a minute passes before they both fall into a pond.

Later, she’ll walk in on him emerging from the shower, hit him in a sensitive spot playing pickleball and, after they’ve made some progress, overhear the wrong conversation at the wrong time. This is a movie that is adhering to some kind of romantic comedy checklist, but whose ingredients add up to very little in the end.

Our tolerance for a silly set-up in a romantic comedy is usually pretty generous if we’re given a clever, charming script and authentic emotions. Just think of how ridiculous so many of the greats sound on paper, from “Sabrina” to “Sleepless in Seattle”? Is it fair to compare “Mother of the Bride” to Nora Ephron and Billy Wilder? Maybe not, but it never hurts to be aware of a North Star, which veterans like screenwriter Robin Bernheim Burger and director Mark Waters no doubt are. Just look at the title. This movie even has a romantic foil in a younger doctor (Chad Michael Murray) who is smitten with Lana, which can’t help but remind of Keanu Reeves in Nancy Meyers’ “Something’s Gotta Give.”

But this is so wildly contrived from the start that you never get to that moment where you’re enjoying it enough to stop asking questions, like did Lana never google Will in the 20 years they’ve been apart and find out that he’s a wildly rich and successful businessman? Or why would a major corporation offer an intern who has a barely maintained lifestyle Instagram that she started freshman year of college “six figures” to help promote their luxury hotels? Why are we supposed to root for these young people with seemingly infinite resources (one of their wedding presents in a multimillion Tribeca loft) who agree to get married in a month because a brand asks them to? Maybe more fundamentally, did the kids and a wedding have to be involved in this story at all? Does it make the idea of Will and Lana getting back together too weird to be fun? Couldn’t they have simply run into one another at a resort?

I won’t go so far as to say that “Mother of the Bride” feels like an AI creation but it does feel at least a little stitched together from pieces of other romantic comedies of varying quality. Why cast a capable comedian like Rachel Harris as the best friend only to have her say lines like “Is he on the menu”? Or give Wilson Cruz so little to do as Will’s brother?

And it’s a shame, too, because Shields and Bratt came ready to play, to fall in the pond and be minimally clothed for comedy’s sake. There must be a new generation of romantic comedy writers and directors who grew up on Ephron and Meyers out there and are ready to give us something that’s commercial and glossy but also smart and fun to revisit (ahem, remember “Set It Up”?). Maybe they just need to be given a shot.

“Mother of the Bride,” a Netflix release streaming Thursday, is rated TV-PG. Running time: 90 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

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The Garfield Movie

After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist... Read all After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist. After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist.

• Mark Dindal
• Paul A. Kaplan
• Mark Torgove
• David Reynolds
• Chris Pratt
• Samuel L. Jackson
• Hannah Waddingham
• 23 User reviews
• 44 Critic reviews

• Jon Arbuckle

• Tour Guide Tracy

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Frank Welker , who's voiced Garfield since 2007, expressed his disappointment at not being asked to voice the character for this film.

Jon : Say when!

[as he starts grating parmesan cheese on lasagne; from teaser and official trailers]

Garfield : Never, Jon! Bury me in cheese!

• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: To Infinity and... (2021)

User reviews 23

• aleandres7-983-698732
• May 2, 2024
• When will The Garfield Movie be released? Powered by Alexa
• May 24, 2024 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Garfield: Mèo Béo Siêu Quậy
• Alcon Entertainment
• Columbia Pictures
• Double Negative (DNEG)
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $49,000,000

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• Runtime 1 hour 41 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos
• D-Cinema 96kHz 7.1
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• 12-Track Digital Sound

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‘Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point’ Review: A Sweet, Nostalgic Love Letter to Suburban Holiday-Season Rituals

Director Tyler Taormina wraps up an unabashedly sincere portrait of a boisterous Italian-American family gathering in twinkling tissue paper, and leaves it under the tree.

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Eventually, Emily and Michelle give their elders the slip and venture into town to hang out and score beers and couple up (Michelle with a waitress played by “Eighth Grade”’s Elsie Fisher), in a way that somewhat recalls Taormina’s lovely and strange debut, “Ham on Rye.” But where that film put a surreal, dreamily satirical twist on the American prom ritual, “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” plays its traditions straight, with a sincerity and sentimentality so brazen it borders on the avant garde.

It’s oddly heartwarming to know that while for many of us, memories of family Christmases exist only in a messy blur, clearly Taormina, his co-writer Eric Berger and perhaps especially his production designer Paris Petersen were paying closer attention. They render their ur-Christmas movie, that dangles like a tree ornament on a string of tinsel stretched between Vincente Minnelli’s “Meet Me In St. Louis” and a hokey late-’90s holiday commercial in almost fetishistically fanatical detail.

Whatever surreality there is here comes from coupling this radically simple premise to a gloriously overstuffed aesthetic of suburban abundance, in which everything sparkles and glows, while tables groan under the weight of a hundred assorted casserole dishes. Even those moments that threaten drama or conflict — like a manuscript left on a hall table or a missing pet lizard — turn into benign anticlimaxes: every Chekov’s gun loaded with nothing but glitter and candy.

From a soundtrack spackled with Sinatra and ’60s pop classics to the hyper-romantic, gauzy visuals delivered by DP Carson Lund (whose directorial debut “Eephus,” which Taormina produces, is also in Directors’ Fortnight) to the unquestioning presentation of weird family rituals as completely normal, there is no War on Christmas here, just a wholehearted surrender to its folksy, kitschy pleasures.

Reviewed at Club 13, Paris. (In Cannes Film Festival - Directors' Fortnight). May 9, 2024. Running time: 107 MIN.

• Production: An Omnes Films production. (World sales: Magnify, New York.) Producers: Tyler Taormina, Krista Minto, David Croley Broyles, Duncan Sullivan, Michael Cera, Michael Davis, Kevin Anton, Eric Berger, David Entin, Rob Rice. Executive Producers: Jeremy Gardner, Joseph Lipsey IV, Brock Pierce, Jason Stone, Hannah Dweck, Ted Schaeder. 
• Crew: Director: Tyler Taormina. Screenplay: Tyler Taormina, Eric Berger. Camera: Carson Lund. Editor: Kevin Anton. 
• With: Matilda Fleming, Francesca Scorsese, Elsie Fisher, Sawyer Spielberg, Maria Dizzia, Michael Cera, Gregg Turkington, Ben Shenkman.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, 'songs' doesn't score.

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Show rock concert, show sex, show icy wastes of Antarctica. Repeat eight times. That's essentially the structure of Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs," a movie that marks an important director's attempt to deal with explicit sex. As an idea, the film is fascinating, but as an experience it grows tedious; the concerts lack closeups, the sex lacks context, and Antarctica could use a few penguins.

To begin with the sex: The story involves a British scientist named Matt ( Kieran O'Brien ) and an American named Lisa ( Margo Stilley ), who is visiting London for obscure reasons; she mentions jobs and studying. They meet at a rock concert in Brixton, go back to his place, and have sex. It is real sex. Real, in the sense that the actors are actually doing what they seem to be doing, and real, in the sense that instead of the counterfeit moaning and panting of pornography, there is the silence of concentration and the occasional music of delight.

Altogether, they go to nine concerts and hear nine songs, but this is not a concert film and the performers are mostly seen in long shot, over the heads of the crowd, which is indeed the way most of us see rock concerts. That works for realism, but it does the musicians no favors.

The nine sex scenes are filmed with the detachment of someone who has no preconceived notion of what the characters will be doing, or why. They lack the choreography of pornography, and act as a silent rebuke to the hard-core image of sex. Winterbottom seems deliberately reluctant to turn up the visual heat; he accepts shadows and obscurities and creates a certain confusion (in the words of the limerick) about who is doing what and with which and to whom. The occasional shots of genital areas are not underlined but simply occur in the normal course of events.

There is also some dialogue. No attempt is made to see Matt and Lisa as characters in a conventional plot. They talk as two people might talk, who have fallen into an absorbing sexual relationship but are not necessarily planning a lifetime together. Matt likes her more than she likes him. There's a revelation late in the film, concerning the flat where she lives, that is kind of a stunner. What Winterbottom is charting is the progress of sex in the absence of fascination; if two people are not excited by who they are outside of sex, there's a law of diminishing returns in bed. Yes, they try to inspire themselves with blindfolds and bondage, but the more you're playing games, the less you're playing with each other. Their first few sexual encounters have the intricacy and mystery of great tabletop magic; by the end, they're making elephants disappear but they know it's just a trick.

The Antarctic footage is mostly of limitless icy wastes. Matt's narration observes that a subzero research station causes simultaneous claustrophobia and agoraphobia -- "like a couple in bed." Yes. They're afraid to be trapped, and afraid to leave. There is some truth here.

The sex scenes betray the phoniness of commercial pornography; when the Adult Film Awards give a prize for Best Acting, they're ridiculed, but after seeing this film you'll have to admit the hard-core performers are acting, all right; "9 Songs" observes the way real people play and touch and try things out, and make little comments and have surprised reactions.

That said, "9 Songs" is more interesting to write about than to see. Its minimalism is admirable as an experiment, but monotonous as an experience. To the degree that O'Brien and Stilley exchange dialogue on screen and inhabit characters, they suggest that a full-blown movie about these characters might be intriguing. What Winterbottom does in part I'd like to see him do in whole: Show a relationship in which two reasonably intelligent and sensitive adults pick each other up for sex, enjoy it, repeat it, and then have to decide if they want to take the relationship to the next level.

In many movies, the first sexual encounter is earth-shaking, and then the lucky couple is magically in love forever -- or at least until the story declares otherwise. In real life, sex is easy but love is hard. Sex is possible with someone you don't know. Love is not. In a way, "9 Songs" is about the gradual realization by Lisa and, more reluctantly, by Matt, that there is not going to be any love and that the sex is therefore going to become kind of sad.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

9 Songs (2005)

Rated NR explicit sex; intended for adults only

Kieran O'Brien as Matt

Margo Stilley as Lisa

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Written and directed by

• Michael Winterbottom

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