Critic Reviews
$9.99 (2009) Rank 5 Reviews
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based on (31) reviews
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Entertainment Weekly
The title of this inventive, enchanting stop-motion animated fable, $9.99, reflects the price of a mail-order book that promises to reveal the meaning of life to an unemployed slacker who lives at home with his blustery father. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Entertainment Weekly
Christian Science Monitor
This stop-motion feature from Tatia Rosenthal - the first Australian-Israeli co-production - is not remotely kiddie fare. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Christian Science Monitor
Dallas Morning News (Cary Darling)
Philadelphia Inquirer (Steven Rea)
Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson)
Seattle Times (Jeff Shannon)
Film-Forward
In this first Australian-Israeli co-production, the imaginary cityscape borrows from New York, Tel Aviv, and Sydney. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Film-Forward
Time Out New York
It's cute beyond belief, but we keep waiting for the damn thing to spring to life and bare a sharp set of teeth. There's a fine line, it would seem, between uplift and insanity. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Time Out New York
NJ.com
And they bring the story to life, too - a good thing as, like many scripts based on a collection of short stories, there's only the thinnest of threads binding it together. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at NJ.com
The Onion A.V. Club
Rosenthal's animation style at times makes a strange match for Keret's work. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at The Onion A.V. Club
Slant Magazine
These narratives are little more than pleasantly off-kilter sketches with confounding resolutions, but director Tatia Rosenthal and writer Etgar Keret artfully present them as an interconnected, crosscut network of neighborhood activity. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Slant Magazine
San Francisco Chronicle (Peter Hartlaub)
New York Post
Fans of deadpan comic fantasy writers like Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut are likely to be intrigued by this lively little packet of weird -- then dive like a dolphin into Keret's loopy story volumes. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at New York Post
Boston Globe (Janice Page)
A movie that entertains and enlightens without being preachy. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Boston Globe (Janice Page)
Minneapolis Star Tribune (Colin Covert)
Metromix.com
An Australian-Isreali co-production from New York based filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal, "$9.99" is one of 14 films eligible in the 2008 Academy Awards' animated feature category. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Metromix.com
filmcritic.com
There are minor moments where the narrative lulls (the actual repossession sequence drags) but, as in his short stories, these moments build on Keret's particular bleakness, making the moments when the uncanny appears all the more powerful. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at filmcritic.com
I.E. Weekly (Amy Nicholson)
Gorgeous moments of animated surrealism and smart moments of emotional truth, yet the film's labor-intensive puppetry is more memorable than its insights into human behavior. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at I.E. Weekly (Amy Nicholson)
Sin Magazine (Austin Kennedy)
Denver Post (Lisa Kennedy)
Spirituality & Practice
This oddball move is a stop-motion animation feature with puppets directed by Tatia Rosenthal. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Spirituality & Practice
The Hollywood Reporter
The film reminds one of the famous mantra about "Seinfeld," that the TV sitcom wasn't about anything. "$9.99" raises that existential malaise to this level: It's about nothing, and it's about the Meaning of Life. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at The Hollywood Reporter
Boxoffice Magazine
As a philosophical pursuit the film feels somewhat thin, though the conceit is perfectly explicit. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Boxoffice Magazine
The New York Times
This effect is doubled by the extraordinary technique used in "$9.99" to bring Mr. Keret's world to life. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at The New York Times
New York Times (A.O. Scott)
$9.99 uses an extraordinary technique to bring the Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s world to life. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at New York Times (A.O. Scott)
Los Angeles Times (Sheri Linden)
Like most films that crisscross among a handful of city dwellers to mull contemporary ennui, $9.99 is less than the sum of its parts. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Los Angeles Times (Sheri Linden)
Hollywood & Fine
"$9.99" won't set the world on fire because it's too understated, too absorbed in telling a set of stories without overlaying them with flash. Its handmade quality is just one of the many appealing things about it. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Hollywood & Fine
ColeSmithey.com
An urban Australian apartment building is the alternately public and private forum for a disparate collection of humanity represented as animated clay people in Tatia Rosenthal's quirky yet unsatisfying animated drama. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at ColeSmithey.com
Christianity Today (Frederica Mathewes-Green)
I was intrigued to learn what the filmmakers think the meaning of life is, but the movie merely dances and alludes without coming right down to anything. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at Christianity Today (Frederica Mathewes-Green)
ReviewExpress.com (Michael Black)
New York Daily News (Joe Neumaier)
This often haunting stop-motion Claymation movie ultimately suffers from what bedevils many live-action movies culled from short stories: a herky-jerky plot. ...read the complete $9.99 movie review at New York Daily News (Joe Neumaier)
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