Here on FerretBrain, we don't tend to pull our punches. So, as concisely as I can: if you've read much science fiction, you will be entirely underwhelmed by the plot of 9. A quick summary: 9 is a little cloth, wood and metal homunculus who awakens in a silent room with a man dead on the floor. He walks, leaps and runs through a serious of fairly common science fiction tropes, and ends on a hopeful closing shot. Just listing the dozen or so tropes I counted should give you a pretty good idea of how it goes: man-machine war, post-apocalyptic world, ragtag bunch of desperate survivors, hidebound cautious leader, adventurous new guy, inadvertent awakening of the ultimate evil machine, big reveal of background information, scientist atoning for his sins, daring mission, main character's super-special ability, mystical talisman, defeat of the Big Bad, "humanity will live on".

What the above doesn't capture is the real reason to go see 9: it's gorgeously executed. The world is bleak, atmospheric, and brilliantly detailed; the characters, from the individual threads in 9's patched arm to the movement of the stray feathers in 7's mask as she hacks at the Beast, are beautifully rendered and their almost featureless faces wonderfully emotive; the 'evil' machines are fantastically realised (and lie, interestingly, about midway between steampunk and cyberpunk in terms of the gears-and-electricity aesthetic); and the star-studded cast of voice actors does their job very well indeed.

Is it worth it? Well, I prefer my films to be telling me something story-wise, and there's no getting past the fact that 9's plot is a rather dull mishmash of concepts that abound in the SF world. But it's an absolutely beautiful production, and for that, I think, it was worth the $10 I paid to see it.