Nine

The A-list hits Italy, as Daniel Day-Lewis and a who's who of screen sirens trill their way through a glossy riff on Fellini's classic 8½. But Paul Martin detects a few bum notes amongst the sweet music.

'Tis a fearless film-maker who decides they are the one to append a sanctified cinematic text. For example, the directorial derrière of Gus Van Sant might normally be smothered with critical kisses, yet when the double Oscar-nominated Palme d'Or winner delivered his 1998 remake of Hitchcock's Psycho he left the ladies and gentlemen of the movie press every bit as furious as they are on those occasions when their editor has rung ahead and expressly commanded that the hotel mini-bar be sealed off.

So if Van Sant – a director who usually attracts acclaim like Ben Affleck attracts scorn – can come a cropper in such circumstances, then what tiny shard of hope is there for Rob Marshall, the man who previously delivered the scarcely-beloved Chicago and Memoirs of a Geisha, and is currently pencilled in to steer the ship on the fourth instalment of The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise? Particularly when you consider that the masterpiece being doodled upon by Marshall is none other than Federico Fellini's 1963 opus 8½, the most famous film about making a film in the history of the entire universe ever. Which, in its fresh persona of Nine, now comes with added song and dance interludes. Crikey Jim! Taken on those terms the Rob 'n' Fed shotgun marriage seems as fishy as Brett Ratner's Battleship Potemkin 2, or McG calling the shots on Citizen Kane Jr.

Though it is a teensy bit disingenuous to imply that Marshall simply awoke one morning and selected a musical refit of Fellini's impressionistic odyssey as his latest project. Nine actually began life back in 1982 as a Broadway musical; something that our man Rob knows a thing or two about, having earned his showbiz stripes as a choreographer and theatre director. Marshall is not short of high-calibre assistance on Nine either. The stage show penned by Maury Yeston, Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston has been adapted for the big screen by the late Anthony Minghella, and Michael Tolkin, who as author of The Player is ideally equipped to inject satiric spark into any movie insider scenario.

Plus, the cast is none too shabby. Fellini might have had Marcello Mastroianni as on-screen alter-ego Guido, but Daniel Day-Lewis is surely none too shabby a replacement in the role of the beleaguered film director, struggling with his latest project and complex romantic entanglements in 60s Italy. And what about the Method man's co-stars? The lucky devil only finds himself playing alongside Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. Why, the world has not seen so stellar an agglutination of female talent since the last Girls Aloud band meeting.

Stellar is the operative word too, as Nine (which is not to be confused with the Shane Acker-directed animation 9 from a couple of months back) provides a reverential perspective on the glittering stars of the motion picture industry that is so old-fashioned it might as well be riding a penny-farthing. Day-Lewis' Guido is told by costumer confidante Lilli (Dench) that his unique gift is to make the films that can touch the hearts of the people – a roguishly off-message line to adopt in the postmodern age of do-it-yourself movie-making and instant fame. While Guido's emotional strife with elegant spouse Luisa (Cottillard) and mistress Carla (Cruz), and the demystification of his ideal woman Claudia (Kidman) doff a nominal cap towards the idea of stars being regular folks just like you and me, there is never any real sense that Nine buys into this desultorily conveyed concept for so much as a New York nanosecond. Witness the cameo appearance from celluloid royalty Sophia Loren as Guido's mother; the red carpet practically unfurls across the screen to announce her saintly presence any time she drifts into shot.

It is hard to discern what point, if any, that Nine is making about film-making. Vogue journalist Stephanie (Hudson, in a role created specifically for the movie) is painted as a feather-brained aesthete, espousing idiocies such as “style is the new content”, and distilling Italian cinematic heritage into a shopping list of stereotypes. Yet Marshall's film is hardly a devastating rebuttal of this surface-over-content approach – what is the director doing here if not exploiting Fellini's deeply personal vision to stitch together a commercial blunderbuss? Nine regularly comes over as shallow as 8½ does dense, with the ambiguous philosophy of Fellini subbed for soap opera. At least Day-Lewis, wheeled out for his annual movie appearance, cuts a compelling figure at the centre of the stylised melodrama. His Guido is far more of a demonstratively jittery wreck than Mastroianni's self-absorbed bundle of weary disenfranchisement, without being any less compelling than the Italian screen icon.

If the dialogue interludes often sag though, the music and choreography soar pretty darn high in comparison. The songs mostly deliver, and are very well belted out by the acting ensemble. The only real duffer is Cruz' booty call; the Spanish star clad in underwear and with her hand clamped between her thighs being so blaring and unsubtle as to more likely embarrass than arouse any who do not possess the most picture postcard attitude towards sexual imagery (the knowledge that Federico Fellini himself fell into this latter category does not make the scene any more successful). A more interesting take on the interaction between male-female desire is the spin given to one of 8½'s most famous sequences, which finds Fergie replacing Eddra Gale as the voluptuous Saraghina. Providing the film's most successful expression of the slick razzmatazz that is Marshall's strongest suite, it is one of a handful of routines that deliver sufficient quality to help keep Nine just about ticking over.

Rating on a scale of 5 times you should bow when Sophia Loren enters a room: 3

Release date: UK = Out now (London West End), 26 December (nationwide) US = Out now (NY, LA), 25 December (nationwide)
Directed by: Rob Marshall
Written by: Michael Tolkin, Anthony Minghella
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench
Rating: UK = 12A, US = PG-13
Running time: 118 minutes