The Nines did nothing to convince me that Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal, The Amityville Horror) is the great actor many consider him to be. I’m still waiting on one Ryan Reynolds movie that I enjoy. I’m expecting I will enjoy The Green Lantern, but my enjoyment of this movie might be despite Ryan Reynolds and not because of him. I also suspect I will enjoy Buried when I watch it. I have heard good things about his performance in that movie. As for now, Ryan Reynolds did nothing in The Nines to improve my perception of him as a lead actor.
The movie is three different segments involving the same three actors playing three different roles. In part one, Reynolds (playing the roles of Gary, Gavin, and Gabriel) is a television star who has, more or less, gone slightly crazy and is now on house arrest for possession of cocaine. Mellisa McCarthy (Margaret, Melissa, and Mary) is the publicist responsible for ensuring he doesn’t mess up, while Hope Davis (About Schmidt, American Splendor) is Sarah, Susan, and Sierra. In story one, she is Sarah, a housewife who lives next door and has nothing better to do with her time than to flirt with Gary. Gary seems to be going slightly out of his mind with all his free time in the big, empty house.
In the second story, Reynolds plays Gavin, a gay television show executive trying to get a pilot turned into a series while being the subject of a reality television show himself. This part of the movie is filmed documentary-style, with the camera following around Gavin.
The third story features Reynolds as Gabriel in what might be a story playing out the plot of the television drama in story two. This story has the Ryan Reynolds and Melissa McCarthy characters married with a child. The Davis character is a psychopath in the woods. This story involves beings coming together and broadening the story to have more profound meaning.
If you think you might be confused by this movie, no “might” exists. All of this is happening before even addressing the idea of The Nines. A lot is happening in this movie, and a tone is set in the first story that has you thinking the story will be a bit of mockery of itself. So, it loses most of its legitimacy when it tries to change into a drama and suspense film in the second and third stories. It is all too much. While the first two personifications of Reynolds offer two completely different characters and hint at a creepy paranoia or possible breakdown that will ultimately come to a head, the third sees any plot fall by the wayside. As you impatiently suffer for the move to end, you might think, at least to some extent, that there were opportunities wasted.
This movie was director John August’s first attempt at feature-length direction. He was overly ambitious. It’s almost as if he’s trying to tell a story similar to the stories told in Crash, Traffic, Memento, and Requiem For A Dream, but all at once. He fails miserably and instead leaves with a movie full of holes, which has its audience scratching their heads and wondering what they just watched and why they watched what they just watched.
Plot 3.5/10
Character Development 4/10
Character Chemistry 7/10
Acting 6.5/10
Screenplay 4/10
Directing 1/10
Cinematography 4/10
Sound 2/10
Hook and Reel 2/10
Universal Relevance 2.5/10
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