'$9.99' review

(Credit: Regent)

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A stop-motion animated look inside the intersecting lives of various residents in an Australian apartment building, including a lonely widower who meets a sarcastic angel, a pothead depressed over a split with his fiancée, a little boy saving money for an action figure and a single father of two grown sons, one of whom falls for a supermodel with an unusual fetish and another who orders a guide to the meaning of life for $9.99.

The buzz: An Australian-Isreali co-production from New York based filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal, "$9.99" is one of 14 films eligible in the 2008 Academy Awards' animated feature category. It's the feature film debut for Rosenthal who had previously made animated shorts based on the stories of Isreali writer Etgar Keret, and collaborates with him as co-writers on this project which unites several of his stories.

The verdict: A modest but undeniably charming under-the-radar surprise, “$9.99” proves animation doesn’t need talking animals or inanimate objects to succeed. (At least creatively; financially is probably another matter.) The film’s overlapping stories are amusing, unpredictable and ultimately very adult. There’s profanity, sex, nudity, drugs and even some graphic violence, but the movie isn’t interested in shock value. It’s just a whimsical, philosophical, multi-character dramedy that happens to be told using lovingly-crafted and artfully-designed puppets. The emotional appeal remains authentically human.

Did you know? Stop-motion is a notoriously painstaking process. Nine animators worked for 40 weeks under Rosenthal’s supervision to complete the film's visuals. On average they were each able to produce four to five seconds of footage per day.

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