{Posted last night–9/1–updated 9/2}

(POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR “9” and “District 9”–Move ahead with caution)

The other day we watched “9“, the Tim Burton produced CG Animated film, and I can honestly put it in the same category as “District 9” (no real relation to the names or numbers by the way) in that they were both highly praised and extremely well received by a lot of people but I just personally didn’t think they were all that good or original.

I am in no way knocking either movie, I didn’t hate either one of them, they just didn’t blow me away. While I can appreciate “District 9″  and what director, Neill Blomkamp, did with 30 mil, I just thought it was “The Fly” with action. And  “9” combined a couple of different movies with little sack of potatoes running around saving the world from Skynet.  Seriously, I’m not knocking either movie, both really well made, I just felt the hype behind both were larger than the actual movies themselves. And that usually hurts the movie for me.

Aside from movies like The Dark Knight, which was going to be awesome regardless, usually the only way for me to like a highly acclaimed movie is to not hear any of the hype. I usually like movies that I’ve heard bad things about because I have none of the expectations. I need a movie to get me and fast. While District 9 got me with the mockumentary style at the beginning I just didn’t think it was as original as everyone said it was. I felt like I had seen this before, be it a combination of a again, The Fly, with Alien Nation, and the scary alien space crafts from either Independence Day or V; aside from creative Prawn aliens, I didn’t think there was anything original. If the appeal was the  use of the budget to make a 30 million dollar film look like a 200 million dollar film then they got me there. But that isn’t going to win me over. No way!

As for 9, I honestly felt like it was a combination of a bunch of different movies, Edward Scissorhands, Terminator, Lord of the Ring, the robots reminded me of a mix between War of the Worlds and the machines from The Matrix and a handful of other movies. I liked it, I’m not going to discredit anyone that was behind this movie, but I was expecting so much more…a lot more then a really really good episode of Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers. This was built up as the best animated movie of last year. Better than “Up” and I have to say, I really enjoyed Up but I felt it was the child friendly version of Gran Torino and I shouldn’t feel that way about a movie from Pixar.

I hope people don’t think I’ve spoken poorly of these films, it was not my intention to make fun of them in any real way, but I can’t honestly say I’d recommend them to anyone. They just didn’t set my world on fire. I wanted to be truly wowed. I’m really taken aback at how many films I’ve seen that were highly praised that I didn’t like. While I did like Up, I loved Wall-E better, if there was a choice between Up and Up in the Air for best movie last year to have “up” in the title, I would totally go for Up in the Air. I thought that was a great movie. It was highly acclaimed and was an Academy Award Nominated film. I can’t be completely off of my game here people.  Out of the ten Best Picture Nominations this year I’ve seen five of them and out of those five I’ve really liked three of them. Maybe there is something wrong with me…

My true thoughts on District 9 and 9 and any other movie like these are as followed:  a few years ago if you put a whole bunch of movies together and produced a film, you were considered a hack. Today, you put a whole bunch of movies together, make it dark you win critical acclaim and an Oscar Nomination. You know what? I’m going to go out there and combine Jaws, RoboCop, Dirty Dancing and The Firm and make damn sure its a dark movie and I’ll see you all in Hollywood on Oscar night. I mean, that’s honestly my opinion and I’m definitely allowed to have it and I challenge anyone to steer my on the right path because I must be lost.

What can I say, everyone else liked these movies, maybe it just boils down to me being  hard to please…