Just how winningly loopy
is The Nines, the
feature directorial debut of hotshot Go screenwriter John August? Let's just say
that it opens with Ryan Reynolds' pretty-boy actor smoking crack with an obese
African-American prostitute, setting his house ablaze, and crashing his car,
and then it gets crazier with each passing moment. Reynolds, incidentally,
plays three different roles, including a character based on August
himself—part of the film is openly autobiographical—as do co-stars
Hope Davis and Melissa McCarthy. That seems like a surefire recipe for Butterfly
Effect/I
Know Who Killed Me-style
camp, but as in the otherwise woeful Smokin' Aces, Reynolds proves
surprisingly convincing. There may be hope for him yet.
The Nines cycles its three leads
through three roles apiece in its three segments. In the first, Reynolds'
self-destructive actor strikes up a friendship of convenience with mysterious
neighbor Davis while under house arrest following the aforementioned orgy of
destruction. In the second, which follows a pseudo-reality-show about the
making of a television pilot, Reynolds plays a successful writer who is asked
to fire friend McCarthy at the behest of backstabbing television executive
Davis. In the final segment, Reynolds plays a video-game creator who discovers
that he's far more powerful than he ever imagined.
August's film is quite possibly
the looniest recent independent film this side of Southland Tales, and not just because it
also decides to be a musical every once in a while. That should be a stirring
endorsement for some and a stark warning for others. The increasing ubiquity of
pop-surrealist puzzle movies like this is increasingly rendering traditional
genres obsolete. The Nines flirts with comedy, drama, science fiction,
showbiz satire, and pop metaphysics, but it ultimately belongs in a video-store
section devoted to cinematic mindfucks, which are like cult movies, only stranger.
Thanks to a clever script, appealing leads, and a light, playful tone, The
Nines is
so briskly entertaining that it's easy to overlook that there isn't much of
substance underneath all the conceptual games and Philip K. Dick-inspired
weirdness.
Key features: Deleted scenes, unedifying
but agreeable separate August commentaries with Reynolds and with McCarthy and
editor Doug Crise, and the smartass August short film "God" highlight a voluminous
special-features package sure to please future Nines cultists.