NUMBER THEORY 9 goes on the lookout.

An extended version of Acker’s 2005 Oscar-nominated short—the story of a group of rag dolls fighting off sentient machines in a dystopian future—9 itself seems a little big for its britches. The vocal talent is there, and the harsh visuals have been retained, but the story hasn’t been fleshed out to feature-length proportions. (It’s obligatory to say that 9, produced by Tim Burton and Night Watch director Timur Bekmambetov, is, by popular-animation standards, dark, but that description suggests more weight than you’ll find here.)

The movie opens with wide-eyed 9 (Wood) wandering out into the garbage-strewn, toxic world of the future, first evading the giant robot canine known as “the beast,” which turns out to be the lesser of two monsters to slay. Humanity has apparently destroyed itself, but not all is lost; the story’s messianic aspects are even more foregrounded than those in Planet of the Apes. (Plummer, as 1, the rag dolls’ skeptical, unhelpful leader, has the Dr. Zaius role.) The computer animation—reputedly designed to resemble stop-motion—is never less than striking in its detail and character differentiation, and five-ninths of the dolls are fun. But even though Acker’s original predates WALL-E, it’s hard not to see Pixar’s film as a more mature, albeit sprightlier, vision of a disastrous future.

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