9

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Any optimism in 9, which is bound to try the fortitude of meeker children, feels hard-won. It actually ends in a bittersweet mystery.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Storyboarded with precision, and enhanced with a resonant score by Deborah Lurie, Acker’s handsome, feature-length 9 is, for all its visual flights of fancy, grounded in an apocalypse-proof message graspable by any schoolchild.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

At barely an-hour-and-a-quarter in length, it's one of those very rare feature films that you wish were longer.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

Taking your very small child to this movie is only a slightly better idea than a trip to "The Final Destination." With that warning out of the way, this action adventure is a big treat for more mature animation and science-fiction fans and a triumph for the young director.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

IF you ask me, Shane Acker's post-apocalyp tic animated film 9 is better than the live-ac tion flick "District 9." Beyond their similar titles, these sci-fi social commentaries are both expanded from shorts under the sponsorship of a world-class director.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

Watching 9 , we know how 8 feels. Sci-fi fans will find heaven in Shane Acker's feature-film debut.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

It’s a perfectly functional, fairly scary kids’ film, with plenty of craft and creativity to keep adults occupied. But with a story as sophisticated as its visuals, it could have been much more.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is post-apocalyptic adventure as imagined for a teen crowd, and what it lacks in depth it makes up for in action. With a slight running time of 80 minutes, 9 doesn't contain an ounce of fat on its animated bones.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The best reason to see it is simply because of the creativity of its visuals. They're entrancing.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Not a perfect 10, but its imperfection is what makes it gripping and bewitching.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Every effort to expand the range of feature-length animation beyond the confines of cautious family fare is to be welcomed, and budding techno and fantasy geeks are likely to be intrigued and enthralled.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

And here's the strangest thing of all: it works. [September 14, 2009, pg.ll4]

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

9, though animated, isn't really a movie for kids. The problem is that, despite its strikingly original set-up and its cool steampunk visual vibe, it's not much of a movie for grown-ups, either.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

I only wish this richly imaginative movie had stayed truer to the dark heart of its visuals.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Something has gone slightly awry, however, en route from the 11-minute film to the 79-minute edition of 9.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The film isn't particularly original, but its dark mood, end-of-times landscape and unique characters will seem fresher to the young audience for which it's aiming than to jaded sci-fi veterans.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

In 50 years, film lovers will look back on 9 as the debut feature of an original talent.

Time Out New York Keith Uhlich

Sobering stuff for an animated movie that pitches itself somewhere between cutesy children’s entertainment and hectoring Grimm’s fairy tale. The problem with 9, though, is that it lacks a consistent tone.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

The result is never as gripping in narrative terms--a well-worn litany of dystopian-future chestnuts--as it is visually.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Design aspects are arresting and the filmmaker's abilities are obvious, but the basic survival story remains slight, just as the general setting, no matter how artfully imagined, is by now pretty familiar.

Washington Post Michael Cavna

Does 9 rival last year's "Wall E" as the best post-apocalyptic "cartoon"? The short answer is Nein. 9 is, however, a visual stunner.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Shane Acker's underwritten but beautifully animated debut is both an ode to technology and a warning against it. Perhaps unintentionally, the film itself echoes those themes.

Slate Dana Stevens

Danny Elfman's swooping orchestral soundtrack only adds to the sense of by-the-numbers familiarity. Elfman's signature sound is so associated with Tim Burton movies that it overwhelms this film's chances of carving out an aesthetic space of its own.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

This expanded version only suffers, albeit in grim visual splendor, from the extrapolation.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Actually, the problem with wunderkind director Shane Acker's "stitchpunk" animated fantasy 9 isn't so much that it bears a sped-up, dumbed-down resemblance to "The Lord of the Rings," although it does. It's more that Acker's dark and whimsical creation, so clearly in the tradition of his mentor Tim Burton, is wondrous to behold but offers only an indifferent and generic mishmash of quest fantasy and post-apocalyptic science fiction when it comes to story.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Shane Acker has expanded his Oscar-nominated short 9 into a full-length feature whose splendid visuals are dragged down by a tedious story.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

9 never adds up to much. It's a dark adult film that gives itself over to the chases and frights of a kiddie movie.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Long on imaginative design but less substantial in narrative, this dreary story of fighting the power is more numbing than thought-provoking.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Calvin Wilson

Although it has a great look and offers a few thrills, the animated film 9 is one of this year's biggest disappointments.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

For all the Saturday-matinee heroics, the movie is dreary and monotonous, the vision junky in more ways than one.

Film Threat Nick Antosca

The nine characters aren’t machines, exactly, but they aren’t people or animals either. They’re little cloth pouches that can move, communicate, and make facial expressions that range from ornery to cute. At some point during the movie I began mentally referring to them as the Owlish Beanbags.