Something Borrowed, Something Blue

"Avatar" is visually dazzling (duh), but disappointing plot-wise; "Nine" is the kind of misfire that killed the musical back in the '60s.

Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece “8 1/2” is such a personal and autobiographical piece of work that to watch another filmmaker attempt a spin on the material is like watching an actor perform another actor’s one-man show. Alas, this sense of displacement winds up being only one of the minor problems of Rob Marshall’s “Nine,” a joyless musical that sees the director recycling concepts from his directorial debut, “Chicago,” whether they work in this context or not.

All the numbers in “Chicago,” you’ll recall, took place in an idealized theater within the mind of Renée Zellweger’s Roxie Hart character, so as to give them a specific context that wouldn’t call for people to burst into song and dance in their everyday experience. This time around, Marshall puts all the songs inside the head of creatively blocked filmmaker Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), who has all of them unfold within the same soundstage.

In other words, every time the music picks up and someone starts singing, the movie slams us back into the same room, sucking the air and the momentum out of songs that, frankly, aren’t all that terrific to begin with. “Nine” began life as a Broadway show, and fans of the original will note that most of the character-development songs got sloughed off on the way to the big screen, leaving us with lots of sound-alike tunes involving women scolding our hero. (You’ll lose track of how many times “Guido Contini!” is sung over the course of this movie.)

While Contini flails about trying to figure out what his new movie’s going to be about, he runs off to a spa, has a fling with his mistress (Penélope Cruz), seeks guidance from his costume designer (Judi Dench), remembers the town tramp of his childhood (Fergie, looking like Divine but lacking his vocal talents), thinks about his mother (Sophia Loren), takes advantage of his understanding wife (Marion Cotillard), flirts with an American reporter (Kate Hudson) and tangles with his leading lady (Nicole Kidman).

Cotillard (who, when shot in close-up and black and white, turns out to be a dead ringer for young Jeanne Moreau), Cruz and — shockingly — Hudson come off the best of this crew, mostly because they’ve got the most memorable musical numbers. Kidman and Loren both sport visages that are, shall we say, anachronistic for the film’s mid-1960s setting (Botox hadn’t been invented yet), while Dench gets saddled with a “Folies Bergère” number that feels extraneous and reminds the audience how much more fun they’d be having watching “Moulin Rouge!” again.

As for the usually indefatigable Day-Lewis, he’s unconvincing as either an Italian (he’s looking more and more like Seán O’Casey with each passing year) or a libertine (even his cigarette smoking looks uneasy and guilt-riddled).

“Nine” represents the kind of colossal misfire that killed the movie musical back in the late ’60s; here’s hoping the genre can survive it.

Alonso Duralde is our guest critic for the month of December.

“Avatar” opens wide on December 18th; “Nine” opens in limited release on December 18th before expanding wide on December 25th.

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