I have a soft spot for musicals, especially those that have lots of showy song and dance numbers, so Robert Marshall’s adaptation of the stage musical Nine would seem to be right up my alley. But Nine pretty much only has showy song and dance numbers. Which is to say, it’s kind of missing a story. Usually musicals can get by with a thin story if the songs are strong and if they are in fact telling that thin story. Nine has two problems: the songs are not that strong, and they are not telling a story. So it wasn’t long before I was wondering why I was watching it. The reason, I guess, was to see if the next song was good. Sometimes it was, sometimes not so much. Also, Marion Cotillard was charmingly beautiful and a pleasure just to look at.

These problems with Nine have their roots in the source material: it is based on a stage musical which in turn is based on Fellini’s 8 1/2, both of which are about a movie director who is unable to make a movie. Yes, this is a movie about a guy not doing something. And it is clear from the outset that nothing will be done. It is filled, then, with imagined musical numbers performed by the women in his life. Some of these were quite entertaining. I particularly liked Fergie’s number, and Kate Hudson’s song was catchy. I don’t really remember the others. Cotillard was beautiful, and Penelope Cruz was simultaneously cute and sultry (a difficult double-trick to pull off I would imagine). Daniel Day-Lewis does as much as can be done with what he is given, which is a troubled, philandering middle-aged artist who has writer’s block and a penchant for imagining musical numbers by the women he has known.