Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) is one week away from beginning to shoot his latest film Italia, the only problem is that he hasn’t written the script yet.  He’s being harassed by the press, his producer, his costume designer and even his star actress, Claudia (Nicole Kidman) for this script that he has no clue what it’s going to be about.  We follow Guido as he searches his life and looks back at all the women that influenced him into being who he is today as he tries to figure out exactly what he’s going to do about this film.

This film is a musical directed by Rob Marshall (he also did Chicago), which based off the broadway musical Nine, which is based on the film 8 ½ (1963).  I recently, within the last month, decided to watch 8 ½ since I was not only curious about this upcoming musical but also what this whole thing was about as well as why everyone loves this movie so much (8 ½ not Nine).  I found myself not loving 8 ½ but at the same time recognizing the brilliance in what it was doing, in how it was able to try and show me the dilemma an artist goes through when he’s being forced to create when he has nothing to show us, while in Nine it felt more like an excuse for us to trudge through his life since we never really felt that Guido was ever really trying to create.  It might be due to the lack of the crazy ideas proposed by the producer.  In 8 ½ Guido was forced into going into space, in Nine it was a more general form idea that the producer was pushing giving Guido more room to breathe with his ideas and therefore never really forcing him into something so desperate.

As a musical the movie, honestly isn’t that bad.  I personally didn’t like all of the music in it but there are some outstanding songs here.  The compositions that go along with every song is great and the singing almost floored me at times.  It’s something special with musicals, you walk in thinking I wonder if this actress or that actor will actually be able to sing and won’t make me wish I brought cotton balls to stuff in my ears and then when they can actually sing you can’t help but be massively impressed and just begin to sway with the rhythm of the song and just get lost in the music.  Personally my favourite song was My Husband Makes Movies followed by Cinema Italino by Marion Cotillard and Kate Hudson respectively.  Other songs which stood out for me are Be Italian by Fergie and Take it All by Marion Cotillard.  Otherwise the music was average at best.

In the end I didn’t find myself enjoying the film but at the same time I didn’t find myself completely hating it.  It made an interesting concept into an overly simple movie that you can’t help but feel didn’t need to be a musical.

IMDB says 6.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 37%

I say 6.0/10