Daniel Day Lewis’s jazz hands are so powerful, they can summon God Himself.

Nine

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Nine is a movie with nothing to say about an artist who has nothing to say. Quick, what's your go-to stereotype about writer's block? The weight of past success? Check. Crises of faith, personality, libido and ego? Check. Sofia Loren's ghost breathing down your neck through lips stuffed with sawdust? Check again.

Daniel Day Lewis works with what he's got as Contini, a Federico Fellini substitute in the same way I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is a substitute for pork belly, but he doesn't quite manage to breathe life into the role. Having created his own Neo-Italian world of flash-bulbs, wayfarers and Vespas, Contini finds himself, after two flops, with nothing to say and a new shoot looming, and he is encouraged by all around him to offer style over substance to the hungry Italian populace.

The audience for Nine would have happily settled for the same. The movie never quite moves on from its central concept, preferring to examine and re-examine just how little Contini has to say from a half-dozen or so angles. The constant set-pieces are puzzling in how little they reveal, aside from betraying the film’s clunky structure. Rashomon this ain't.

Nine is admirably devoted to its twin principles of thematic repetition and near-nudity, and the deeply flawed screenplay by Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella (adapted from the Broadway musical by Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston, who adapted it from Mario Fratti’s Italian original) treats its many women indifferently at best. Consider Kidman, as Contini’s longtime muse. Wouldn't it have been more interesting to present the two as artistic equals? Nope, just another stultifying musical number, another beautiful actress falling at his feet like a cardboard cutout.

Marion Cotillard wrings some life out of her performance as Contini’s wife, while Kate Hudson gives a particularly dull-eyed performance, the most noticeable excess baggage in an excessive film. The beautiful and bedazzled masses present something of a quandary: This is a glitzy musical about a whiny chauvinist in midlife-crisis mode, surrounded by nekkid ladies who act like animals in heat. Who is this movie supposed to appeal to?

Probably not lovers of music. But then, you try shaping a tune around some of these lyrics and see how well it turns out — the songs approach an Alanis Morissette level of verbosity and cadence. The cinematography fares better: nothing game-changing going on behind the camera, but what we do see is professionally executed.

Nine provides little to draw attention without simultaneously repulsing (Fergie, anyone?), and can't recapture the razzle-dazzle of director Rob Marshall's last musical, big-screen Chicago. As it is, Nine can really only be recommended to fans of one-note pseudo-biopics.