With Nine, lightning does not strike twice

Any number of movies have served as the basis for stage musicals – even Gone With the Wind was bravely attempted, though with predictable results. But it's fairly unusual and probably not a good idea to bring such musicals back into their original medium.

One of the rare instances when it did work was Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, which turned into a Broadway tuner, Sweet Charity, and then became a pretty terrific Bob Fosse musical film. The Weinstein Co and a host of producers thought lightning might strike twice with Fellini's 8 1/2, which inspired the Tony Award-winning 1982 musical Nine. Lightning does not strike the same place twice.

Fellini's 1963 masterpiece takes you inside a man's head. Since he happens to be a movie director, those daydreams and recollections are visually striking but, more to the point, you sense, through the nightmares of an artist blocked from his own creativity, everything that is going on inside this man. In Nine, written by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella, you get a tired filmmaker with too many women in his life and not enough movie ideas.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Guido and, to his credit, it's not Marcello Mastroianni's Guido but a new character, more burned-out than blocked and increasingly sickened by his womanising. The English-language film insists it's still 1965 Rome, where black-and-white Cinecitta Studios, Vespas, Ray-Bans and all things Italian reign. A new Guido Contini movie is to start production, but no script exists. In despair, Guido flees to a seaside spa. In a day, his mistress (Penelope Cruz), demanding producer, and then his wife (Marion Cotillard) take up residence in the small town.

Sad romantic trysts and unproductive production meetings ensue. In his imagination, all the women of his life: his mother (a rather saintly Sophia Loren), muse (Nicole Kidman), an on-the-make American journalist (Kate Hudson), and hooker (Stacy Ferguson of the Black Eyed Peas), materialise. Each has her production number. Then, the numbers done, the movie returns to dreary melodrama.

With Nine you never get inside the protagonist's head. You just can't decide whether his problem is too many women or too many musical numbers breaking out for no reason.

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