$9.99 (Tatia Rosenthal, 2008): Australia/Israel

Reviewed by Kevin Tran. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival

Do you remember the last time you saw a film where you thought the characters were more like cardboard than humans? Unfortunately, this was my experience with The Informers, Gregory Jordan’s travesty of a film.  Luckily though, I was fortunate to see $9.99 literally minutes after that screening. Tatia Rosenthal’s film is a much more enjoyable experience, done entirely in stop motion with minor computer animation.

The film follows selective lives in a Sydney apartment complex: a couple going through a difficult break-up, a depressed father living with his son, who is obsessed with finding the meaning of life, his brother, a repo man who often works in the building and who is dating a super model who insists that he shave all the hair on his body, as well as her neighbor, a lonely old man who meets an angel (the voice of Geoffrey Rush).

It seems absurd to compare a sex, crime, and drug film like The Informers with an animated film like $9.99, but the two movies only differ by their styles. Both films attempt to intertwine different stories in order to make a serious statement about…well, life. However, $9.99 is able to connect its message much more clearly. And what is even more impressive is that the inanimate humans in Rosenthal’s film are more “real” than the live action humans in Jordan’s.

Furthermore, $9.99 was made using a technique too often associated with childlike themes. Instead, Rosenthal uses this style to adapt the short stories of Etgar Keret (who also wrote the screenplay for the film), existential themes that look at the meaning of life, love, and happiness from an absurd, farcical point of view.