I love Rob Marshall’s film of Chicago (2002), but everything that went right with Chicago has gone sadly wrong with Nine, his film of the 1982 Broadway musical based on Fellini’s screen masterpiece 8 1/2 (1963).  Chicago was a triumph in concept, with all its musical numbers presented as expressions of Roxie Hart’s imagination, and it was also a case of dream casting, with three stars (not known for their singing and dancing) doing a bang-up job in roles perfectly suited to their personalities.  Nine is a movie in search of a concept; Marshall and his team never figured out how to make a movie of Nine.  Almost all the numbers are done on the same half-dressed soundstage, a visual that gets old very fast and offers little illumination.  And it doesn’t even make sense, since not all the songs are coming from the perspective of Daniel Day-Lewis’ Guido Contini, film director.  

The original Broadway production soared on Tommy Tune’s breathtaking stage pictures and ceaseless cleverness, and the recent inferior revival was salvaged by the considerable magnetism of Antonio Banderas.  Which brings me to another reason why Nine fails:  Daniel Day-Lewis.  Even the critics who have hated this movie have been kind to its star.  Day-Lewis is too highly regarded to get picked on, but it’s only fair to report when he is bad, and he’s bad in Nine.  He may be a great actor, but he lacks what a movie musical needs, a star personality.  It’s not that Guido is supposed to be a stud, but he does require the charisma to have so many women whirling through his life.  Early reports that Javier Bardem was going to star as Guido were encouraging because Bardem has exactly what Nine needs.  Without a star of that kind of vitality, a modern-day Marcello Mastroianni, the film has no center.  Day-Lewis is a charmless shell here, and with a bad Italian accent.     

Now to the bevy of women:  Kate Hudson, as a reporter, is stuck with a new awful song (“Cinema Italiano”) and the tackiest production number; Sophia Loren, as Guido’s mama, wafts through like a legend, but it was hardly worth her trouble; Nicole Kidman is statuesque and toneless in her solo; Judi Dench at least has a dry humor as Guido’s costume designer; Penelope Cruz can do no wrong lately, and she comes off as both delicious and touching as Guido’s mistress.  My favorite performance here is Marion Cotillard’s as Guido’s wife.  Her ballad, “My Husband Makes Movies,” is the only musical scene that offers anything personal or affecting.  Amid much frenzy, Cotillard takes her time and delivers a lovely, intimate performance.  For the most part, though, Marshall strands his illustrious band of talented ladies.   

Chicago clicked with the public partially because it was so thematically fresh, expressing the lust for fame familiar to audiences in a world of reality-TV and a 24-hour news cycle.  Nine comes off as nothing more than the whinings of a self-absorbed artist.  Though I had been moved by the show in 1982 (I even saw it twice), and admire Fellini’s film, this Nine seems so unnecessary, so useless and meandering.  It may be relatively short but it feels interminably long.  And has Italy ever been photographed this way, as if the sun never comes out?

I thought Rob Marshall was the guy we had been waiting for, someone to make a string of classy and dazzling movie musicals, but Nine makes it look as though he has already run out of inspiration.