So, I was half of a review-off over at Fantasy Magazine, where I turned in what turned out to be the more charitable of two reviews of 9.

It’s a little more forgiving than my Nine Questions, mostly because I had a few hours to sit back and examine whether I would watch the movie on TV, even on mute, because of the visuals. The answer was Yes, so the movie got scored almost entirely on the strength of its design and animation. (And also because Christopher Plummer was in it, and that dude’s a stone fox.)

In fact, the movie reads less like a film and more like a video game, where the POV character must do something stupid-yet-necessary in order to set up the gameplay, and then fight a series of enemies, pester other characters or return to home screen for more information, and build up enough Knowledge and Agility points to face off with the Big Boss at movie’s end.

Game-players of the world, please note that though I continue to think the above observation is true, you can probably tell by reading it that the last video game I played was called up with a DOS command. Mea maxima culpa.