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80Though slightly marred by a clunky structure and a lack of truly catchy tunes, Nine’s wall-to-wall first-rate performances from its stellar cast (especially Cotillard) add a touch of class.
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80Sophisticated, sexy and stylishly decked out, Rob Marshall's disciplined, tightly focused film impresses and amuses.
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80The carnival is loud, brash, brassy, sexy and sometimes tacky or silly, but always entertaining.
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75Rob Marshall's flawed but frequently dazzling Nine is a hot-blooded musical fantasia full of song, dance, raging emotion and simmering sexuality.
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75Despite following its stage inspiration and bringing structure to Fellini's "8 1/2" (the ultimate source material), Nine still suffers at times from a lack of narrative drive and it doesn't have the surreal, dreamlike quality of "8 1/2" to fall back upon.
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67Deft and fast-moving, but shouldn’t a musical have at least a few songs you can hum on your way home?
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63The movie is shot and edited like a two-hour trailer for itself. As such, it's not hard to take, but you do tend to wonder when the film itself is going to start.
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63A spectacle where A-list talent strives mightily to elevate a C-plus effort.
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63It seems perverse to say a musical is at its best when nobody is singing, but Nine is a perverse kind of musical.
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63As much Fosse as Fellini. It’s a shadow of a shadow, refracted through a fun-house mirror. For all the noise and color, it feels like an exercise and not a natural expression.
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60The magic simply isn't there.
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60All of these women, and Day-Lewis too, sing and dance vigorously and enthusiastically throughout Nine, and the results are spotty, though you can't accuse anyone of not trying.
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60This kind of movie is superfluous yet strangely compelling. We don't need to see Daniel Day-Lewis and Nicole Kidman sing a duet next to a Roman fountain any more than we need to see an elephant pirouette in a tutu, but wouldn't you be crazy to pass up the opportunity to see either?
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50The 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.
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50Nine is just plain adrift in its own lack of necessity.
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50Nine isn't so much a movie as it is a collection of standalone musical numbers, strung together by the thinnest of plots.
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50We'd all like to live in an Italian movie. So says a character in Nine, and it's probably the best line in this musical misfire.
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50The movie is full of risible pontifications about the nature of art but falls well short of capturing the angst of creative frustration.
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50Unassuming only in its title.
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50The numbers, while lively, remain cluttered and stage-bound. The women, however, are spirited and sexy.
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50Eventually, the inconsistency wears, and the film provokes mostly indifference and restlessness.
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50After a while, Nine plays like some Hollywood charity revue.
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50One is forced to ask: who wants to make, or watch, a major Hollywood musical about mental block?
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50With its stagy dance numbers, this reminded me more of Bob Fosse's confessional musical "All That Jazz" than "8 1/2," though it suffers from comparison to either, given that Marshall is several steps removed from Fellini's feverish self-investigation.
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50A joyless trudge, particularly when compared to Fellini’s vibrant original?
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40Let’s not dance around it: Nine--is a dud.
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40Though there is plenty of razzle-dazzle onscreen, Nine is unlikely to ignite many sparks among viewers.
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38In the clumsy hands of director Rob Marshall, this tacky, all-star botch more closely resembles a video catalog for Victoria’s Secret.
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Wisely keeping her distance, Cotillard mostly lurks along the sidelines projecting a wounded visage, before finally stepping into the spotlight for the movie's single moment of emotional sincerity. It's the only point at which Nine seems more than a total zero.
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30Because Nine is a musical, it would help if your leading man could sing, and I don't mean carry a tune, but actually flex some vocal muscle. Again, love Daniel Day-Lewis, excellent racing shirtless through the forest, but a song-and-dance man he is not. So what does that leave Nine with? Well not much.
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30Straining to capture artistic frenzy, it descends into vulgar chaos, less a homage to Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” (its putative inspiration) than a travesty.
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25John Lennon once said, "There's a great woman behind every idiot." This time, I'm counting seven of them.
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25It's a film within a film about a film within a film, and seems to lose layers of authenticity with each iteration, finally becoming a profoundly alienating experience.