Review of The Nines

Gay screenwriter John August (Charlie's Angels, Go, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) certainly can't be accused of playing it safe with his directing debut, an uneven but satisfying puzzle-box of a film that mashes comedy, drama, sci-fi, reality television and existential navel-gazing into a disarmingly amusing and always fascinating package. It's enormously helpful that the package in question is Ryan Reynolds, an actor whose charm and accessibility are matched only by his faint-making looks, particularly in his current "born-again himbo" phase. When I read that Reynolds was playing not one, but THREE characters in this movie, one of whom is gay, my ticket pretty much bought itself.

They had me at "himbo".

The Nines (or, THE NIN9S) is split into three segments (and let's not get into the fact that three goes into nine three times, because there is plenty enough of that kind of cosmic "huh!" talk in the movie itself), each featuring the same three actors (Reynolds, Hope Davis and the hilarious Melissa McCarthy from Gilmore Girls) in different roles. Let's see if I can do this without giving anything important away...

In "The Prisoner", Reynolds plays Gary, a TV actor on a crime scene show who, after accidentally burning his house down and smoking crack with a prostitute following a bad break-up, is confined to house arrest at the home of a client of his publicist, Margaret (McCarthy). The guy whose house he's living in is gay (as the insane Margaret is quick to point out), and what's more, the house seems to be haunted. Gary strikes up a flirtation with the housewife from next door, Sarah (Davis), who considers herself as much a prisoner in her house as Gary is in his because of her new baby, which is rather hilariously represented almost entirely by a nursery monitor.

Gary thinks he's losing his mind because he's finding notes in his handwriting that he didn't leave and seeing ghosts of himself in different outfits ... not to mention finding the number 9 everywhere he looks. The setup is wonderfully creepy (trapped in a stranger's house, can't leave), and Gary soon becomes suspicious of both Margaret and Sarah as being behind things. After a bizarre confrontation, something very odd happens and suddenly we're on to story two, "Reality Television".

In this part of the tale, Reynolds plays Gavin, a gay television producer who is working on a new series, Knowing, which stars his best friend, Melissa McCarthy (McCarthy). But when their network liaison Susan (Davis) starts giving Gavin the runaround about whether the show will get picked up or not (leading him to compromise his friendship with Melissa), he starts to unravel. Like, seriously. Funny enough, Gavin is the guy whose house Gary from the first story is staying in, and it seems he has left the notes that Gary later (earlier?) finds. And Gavin is being haunted just as much as Gary was, with men who see through two-way glass yelling at him and other odd happenings keeping you from getting too comfortable in the story.

Gavin is actually an on-screen version of August himself and loosely relates to when August had a short-lived show on television. For Reynolds to essentially play his director, acting against a woman playing herself, must have been an out-of-body experience for all involved, particularly in the painfully honest centerpiece scene between the two friends. Sadly, Reynolds doesn't actually get any action as a gay fella, but it would have made no sense for this character and segment anyway, as it's told through the eyes of a reality show following Gavin.

Again, a Very Strange Thing happens, and we're on to "Knowing", which is coincidentally the television show that Gavin was producing in the second story. Reynolds is Gabriel, a scruffy video game designer who is on a driving trip with his wife Mary (Melissa) and their daughter (Elle Fanning), who is deaf and mute. The car stalls and Gabriel goes to look for help, and runs into Sierra (Davis), a backpacker who knows his work and might have a dark secret. Things get very odd very quickly in this one, but I won't go into much detail.

And detail is where The Nines' real strengths lie. August gleefully allows his three worlds to cross-pollinate like a mad scientist with particularly randy fruit flies, and the results make for an active moviegoing experience that's quite unique. Is there a mystery to be solved? Yes and no; while there are clues to pick up, they don't really get you far. It's kind of like doing a jigsaw of a Picasso: what you get when you put the pieces together doesn't really make much more sense than than when they weren't ... but after all, the fun is in the piecing, not admiring the finished product.

And while the over-arching themes of creative control and responsibility definitely give you something to chew on, it's the cleverly-constructed little worlds that August has devised and the odd people within them that are the real draw here. Reynolds is fantastic in all three roles, and it's a pleasure to see him as a sun-blonde Hollywood star, a nerdy-but-cute gay fussypants, and a hot dad all in one movie. Davis delivers in her mysterious, antagonistic roles, but it's really McCarthy who shines here as a psychotic Hollywood player, an actress trying to make it in a business that focuses on waist sizes and conventional beauty more than talent, and a mother trying to keep her family safe.

The film's scrappy, low-budget feel (in two of the segments, anyway) and sometimes jarring shifts in tone are likely to turn some viewers off, but the movie is absolutely unique in its vision, style, and structure. In fact, it demands multiple viewings to catch all of the details and in-jokes (of which there are many), and I'll even talk crazy and say that even were it not for the three-fer Ryan Reynolds fix, I'd still check this one out again for its wacky premise and sense of humor. August has delivered a wonderful cure to the late-summer blahs for folks who like their movies with a dash of wit, a dash of weird, and a whole lot of himbo.