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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published:29 November 2007

Ryan Reynolds multi-tasking in The Nines

It’s a three for all in wacky debut

THE NINES
Directed by John August
Certificate 15

SURREAL, quirky, or merely absurd? This oddball first-time feature venture by director John August manages to be all three, and still left me wondering just what on Earth it was all about.
The film is divided into three parts, each starring a trio of actors with Ryan Reynolds holding the reins linking them all together. In the first, The Prisoner, he plays TV star Gary who goes on a binge after his girlfriend gives him the heave-ho.
Following a drug bust Gary finds himself under house arrest (someone else’s, not his own) with only a publicist (Melissa McCarthy) for company – until he chats up a neighbour (Hope Davis). That’s when he hears the voices, ghostly whisperings about “the nines”, whatever they may be.
The three surface again in Part 2, titled Reality Television, with Reynolds playing a screenwriter, Gavin, who owns the house where Gary was incarcerated and is trying to launch a reality show starring Melissa.
The final segment brings Gavin’s script into the real world, with Reynolds – now called Gabriel – a video game designer who abandons his wife (Melissa again).
Reynolds makes a fair job of switching pace to wear all those different hats.
But in the end you have to wonder whether it was worth the angst.

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