When you think of legendary film director Tim Burton, films like “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and even “James and the Giant Peach” come to mind. Most of Burton’s films have a similar artwork, style, and theme. Most people expect a Burton movie to be stop-motion-animation.

But now, Burton has graced the CGI world of movies with his film 9, and his tone has dramaticaly changed. Gone are the cutesy love scenes and characters based solely on comic relief. There are no magical forests or choreographed songs. In fact, there are actually no forests to speak of.

Many of you will recall the trailer for 9 where Burton made excellent use of a Coheed and Cambria song and showed scenes of awe-inspiring action while managing to give little to nothing away about the story. Let me fill you in.

In the world of 9, humanity has once again doomed itself. A machine that was designed for good has become self-aware and manages to wipe out all of humanity. Before you write this off as a generic apocalyptic movie, know that Burton has managed to add a very interesting twist on the overused plot-line.

Moments before humanity is wiped out for good, an unnamed German scientist transfers the life left in his body into 9 different ragdolls. He then instructs his creations to do what humanity has failed to do for the past years: kill the machine that’s causing all the problems. How the scientist figured that 9 pieces of cloth about 6 inches tall are supposed to destroy some doomsday machine that was capable of wiping out humanity I’ll never know.

Sadly, that’s where my knowledge, along with everyone else’s, stops. When it comes to the story, one of the major flaws of the movie is the lack of virtually any background information.

Another problem is the run time. 9 clocks in at about 79 minutes total. It has become customary now-a-days to have a length of at least 90 minutes, and even that is usually considered a short movie. My only other complaint is that the characters are pretty hollow and you never really get connected to them or understand their real motives for doing some of the stupid things they do.

I’m not saying that the movie was bad, I really enjoyed the experience. The action is both visceral and exciting. The world they inhabit is beautifully bleak and desolate. The animation is top notch, and the scale of the movie is great.

I’m not exactly sure that this movie is worth paying 10 dollars to go see in the theater unless you really want to experience the surround sound of the movie theater. But this is a movie worth watching. I recommend renting this movie from any movie rental store in the general area. 9 is definitely a unique experience that should be given a shot.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars