The film is more than picturesque whimsy, though: at times it reaches for some really quite weird imagery – and some raw honesty.
Comment
09/17/09
Rate this Movie 
$9.99 (2009)
80
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:46
Fresh:37
Rotten:9
Average Rating:6.8/10
Consensus: Its storyline isn't as wondrous as its visuals, but $9.99 has a sophistication and handmade charm that sets it apart from the animated pack.
Runtime: 78 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Based on the Short Stories of Etgar Keret, $9.99 is a stop motion animated feature which offers slightly less than $10 worth about the meaning of life. Have you ever wondered "What is the... [More]
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia, Samuel Johnson, Claudia Karvan
Director: Tatia Rosenthal
Reviews for $9.99
Set in a grim, grimy, often bleak world, a hybrid, densely detailed environment of interwoven stories and chance encounters, with occasional flights of fantasy and rare glimmers of hope.
09/17/09
The whole never quite comes together, in fact -- but even without that unity, the film has an oddball charm and intelligence.
09/16/09
Think Robert Altman's Short Cuts with clay characters as engaging as human actors, and you might get a sense of what you'll experience.
09/16/09
Not for all tastes due to its arthouse nature, this animation transcends into beautiful magical realism with a spectacular Australian voice cast.
09/15/09
Playful, light-hearted and fun, with an impressive cast of Aussie stars and some fine stop-motion animation. As it stands, at 74 minutes, it’s not quite as smart (or rewarding) as one would hope.
09/13/09
The Jewish melancholy and downbeat humour that oozes from the original writing is overlaid with an Australian idiom, thanks ironically to the great cast, in a transplant that doesn't really take
09/10/09
It's a challenging film with plenty of merit as a handful of unrelated stories criss-cross and involve us in a mountainous thought provoking journey in which we ponder the meaning of happiness
09/10/09
The creation of this world is amazingly detailed; it’s magic, really. But maybe the film doesn’t quite reach the heights of everyman experience to which it aspires.
09/09/09
$9.99 is consistently amusing but rarely laugh-out-loud funny.
08/30/09
I'm kind of getting tired of these "grown up" cartoons like WALTZ WITH BASHIR and PERSEPOLIS. To me, they kind of seem more focused on the gimmicks than the actual story.
08/16/09
It has been a good year for animation that pushes thematic and visual boundaries.
08/07/09
$9.99 may not be entirely successful from a dramatic perspective, and it certainly offers little enlightenment about the meaning of life. But the film is so intriguing in other ways that it's definitely worth a look.
08/06/09
The conclusion is cheerful -- rather than strain for answers, we should just experience the joy of the moment -- but the road to that resolution is jarring.
07/31/09
The story, though, rarely engrosses as it poses the old 'meaning of life' query, then dances around the subject.
07/31/09
$9.99 doesn't make any big statements, but Keret and director Tatia Rosenthal are obviously interested in how each of our lives affects the people around us and in the crazy things people do in an effort to connect with each other.
07/31/09
Using the medium of Wallace and Gromit and Gumby, Israeli filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal turns her clay figures into real people in $9.99, a wise, wistful study of hope and dread.
07/30/09
It isn't always clear if the animation is integral to the movie or merely a way of sprucing up its more familiar tales of melancholy and yearning.
07/24/09
The stop-motion animated world of $9.99 is a marvel to behold.
07/16/09
A bit boring and too long
07/15/09
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December 09, 2008:
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