The Nines

Screenwriter John August (Big Fish, Go) makes his directorial debut with this trio of interrelated stories about one man (Ryan Reynolds) who’s either a burned-out TV actor, a homosexual screenwriter, a milquetoast video-game designer or the all-knowing, all-being Creator of the universe. It certainly gets points for weirdness—The Nines is a whacked-out amalgam of Lost-style conspiracy, meta-Hollywood self-infatuation, reality-show satire, The Sims and odd musical number. In the end, it’s an OK effort that could have been put over by a galvanizing lead performance, but Reynolds merely delivers three shades of the same lunkhead. Hope Davis, also playing three different characters who may be the same person, almost saves the show, but in the end, it’s just an intriguing oddity.