3, "9"

Lets start with the highlights.

1. It was in the posh screen with nice comfy armchairs.
2. It was quiet, only 7 people in the screen.
3. It was Tim Burton!!!

Now I love Tim Burton, The original Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice etc. Now, as a producer its his first film since "Corpse Bride" in 2005 and as a director his last film was "Sweeney Todd" in 2007 so it was nice to see something new from him. And it did not disappoint!!

Barring "Alice in Wonderland" due out 2010 (and planning to be very good indeed) this was his best film for a long time. The story was good, the Animation was excellent and the cast of voices was pretty impressive. Elija Wood headed the cast with the title role and Christopher Plummer, John C Reily, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover & Martin Landau played the other "Sack Men"

The character names were very easy to remember (1 through 9) and the machine was called "The Machine". Simples!

The sets were like every ones favourite "Little big Planet" environments and the effects for the explosions were great.

Basically, World destroyed by Machines and all humans died out. 9 Creatures have been created by an inventor (who also invented the machine that took over the world, masterminded by Nazi looking dude's) who passes a piece of his soul into each of them so a non mechanical presence remains on earth and all is going fine until "9" accidentally wakes up the machine!! - All hell breaks loose and a mission is launched to defeat the machine, win the day and save an extremely small population!!.

Sadly, not all survive and my little girl did find this upsetting, but its a 12a and deservedly so. The "Baddie animation" of the Machine, A Robotic skull dog and a baby doll faced Cobra (Think the baby head doll spider thing in Toy Story, only much scarier!!) were fantastic and definately stole the show. The sack men were great with little zips housing the mechanical workings, telescopic eyes and gadget filled backpacks. Loved it!

Yes, kids under 10 will jump at the jumpy bits, but that's part of the fun.

This is a really good kid / adult movie, in fact of the 7 people visiting 5 were adults.

See this if.........Batman (Original) made you smile and you like dark animation.