$9.99 (2008)
Average Rating: 6.6/10
Reviews Counted: 55
Fresh: 41 | Rotten: 14
Its storyline isn't as wondrous as its visuals, but $9.99 has a sophistication and handmade charm that sets it apart from the animated pack.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 20
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 4
Its storyline isn't as wondrous as its visuals, but $9.99 has a sophistication and handmade charm that sets it apart from the animated pack.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 5,199
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Movie Info
A jobless 28-year-old residing in an apartment with his single father discovers the meaning of life for a bargain-basement price in this stop-motion animation film featuring the voices of Ben Mendelsohn, Barry Otto, Anthony LaPaglia, and Geoffrey Rush. Dave has made it his mission to discover the meaning of life, so when he stumbles across a book claiming to answer just that question for the low, low price of just $9.99, he can't help but make an impulse purchase. Much to his surprise, the book
Cast
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Geoffrey Rush
The Angel/Homeless Man -
Anthony LaPaglia
Jim -
Samuel Johnson
Dave -
Claudia Karvan
Michelle -
Joel Edgerton
Ron -
Barry Otto
Albert -
Leeanna Walsman
Tanita -
Ben Mendelsohn
Lenny -
Leon Ford
Stanton -
Henry Nixon
Drazen/Beanbag/Radio An... -
Jamie Katsamatsas
Zack -
Brian Meagan
Clement
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All Critics (55) | Top Critics (20) | Fresh (41) | Rotten (14) | DVD (1)
A deliberately coarse character style that's more Gumby than Gromit.
Top CriticA small gem of an animated film, $9.99 manages to be rich in whimsy and fantastical turns while still rooted in human ground.
It has been a good year for animation that pushes thematic and visual boundaries.
The conclusion is cheerful -- rather than strain for answers, we should just experience the joy of the moment -- but the road to that resolution is jarring.
Using the medium of Wallace and Gromit and Gumby, Israeli filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal turns her clay figures into real people in $9.99, a wise, wistful study of hope and dread.
It isn't always clear if the animation is integral to the movie or merely a way of sprucing up its more familiar tales of melancholy and yearning.
After the smooth finish of Mary and Max earlier this year, $9.99 can't match up with its similar dark themes.
There is so much to admire about the skill involved in the stop-motion craft, but all films, regardless of their devices, rise or fall on their story, which is abstract and unengaging in $9.99.
Director Tatia Rosenthal's inspiration was to populate the proceedings with animated 3-D figures; her cerebral, darkly funny film is a feat of stop-motion rumination.
Like most episode pieces, Rosenthal and Keret seem to have chosen the easy way out by not taking the trouble to develop any of the ideas beyond the basic anecdote.
The film is more than picturesque whimsy, though: at times it reaches for some really quite weird imagery - and some raw honesty.
Set in a grim, grimy, often bleak world, a hybrid, densely detailed environment of interwoven stories and chance encounters, with occasional flights of fantasy and rare glimmers of hope.
The whole never quite comes together, in fact -- but even without that unity, the film has an oddball charm and intelligence.
Think Robert Altman's Short Cuts with clay characters as engaging as human actors, and you might get a sense of what you'll experience.
Not for all tastes due to its arthouse nature, this animation transcends into beautiful magical realism with a spectacular Australian voice cast.
Playful, light-hearted and fun, with an impressive cast of Aussie stars and some fine stop-motion animation. As it stands, at 74 minutes, it's not quite as smart (or rewarding) as one would hope.
The Jewish melancholy and downbeat humour that oozes from the original writing is overlaid with an Australian idiom, thanks ironically to the great cast, in a transplant that doesn't really take
It's a challenging film with plenty of merit as a handful of unrelated stories criss-cross and involve us in a mountainous thought provoking journey in which we ponder the meaning of happiness
The creation of this world is amazingly detailed; it's magic, really. But maybe the film doesn't quite reach the heights of everyman experience to which it aspires.
$9.99 is consistently amusing but rarely laugh-out-loud funny.
I'm kind of getting tired of these "grown up" cartoons like WALTZ WITH BASHIR and PERSEPOLIS. To me, they kind of seem more focused on the gimmicks than the actual story.
$9.99 may not be entirely successful from a dramatic perspective, and it certainly offers little enlightenment about the meaning of life. But the film is so intriguing in other ways that it's definitely worth a look.
Audience Reviews for $9.99
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Foreign Titles
- Le Sens de la vie pour 9.99$ (FR)
