The sperm in Nine Below are excellent: adorable, courageous, expressive, smart and witty. Kudos to the special f/x department.  This reviewer wishes, however, that the same could be said for their human co-stars.  All in all though, the procreative survival film lives up to its declaration as "the most amazing story of adventure, friendship and insemination ever told." 

Which doesn't say much, but so be it.


Our human protagonists are a middle-aged couple who desperately want a kid.  The woman, Joy (Madonna), is a virgin who has been saving herself for just the right man; Desmond (Denzel Washington) is that man, but has just been told that his sperm count is extremely low: just nine measely sperm.  Eternally hopeful, however, the couple risks the odds and Desmond soon releases his nine stalwart travelers into Joy.  But from the outset, trouble looms.

The sperm first appear at play, tiny but still vibrant as they adjust to their environment. We meet Nick, the gallant elder sperm, and there's Tex, the new sperm on the block (with striking blue eyes).  There's also Zoa, Peppy, Stu, Cassandra, Shirley, Tameel and Phil.   The sperms' efforts to look out for each other is inspiring and their uncanily animated faces are actually believable (if sperm had faces, that is).

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"...the film lives up to its declaration as 'the most amazing story of adventure, friendship and insemination ever told.'"

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We've barely met two of our sperm, Phil and Zoa, before they have trouble making it into the first cave.  At the last second, Zoa manages to join her tail with a member of the team, but poor Phil is left behind.  The scene recalls the emotionally powerful dramatic tension of  Saving Private Ryan.  The team yells to Phil about how they'll come back to get him, but in this film the director leaves little doubt that Phil is a goner.

In the next segment, the gang is nearly crushed in a narrow passageway by enormous contractions, and only when they bar the walls with parts from an old IUD are they able to continue to the next stage of their life-altering adventure.  Oh, but Peppy and Cassandra don't survive the crushing.

Spoiler warning: Some of the sperm don't make it.  Turn back now if you don't want to know who makes it.

Early scenes of their swim up a long tunnel are cinematically gorgeous, with the remaining sperm swimming upstream with boundless energy through a grand underwater landscapes of kelp beds, sea urchins and dancing jellyfish, through vast interior tundra, en route to the lone continent of the egg.

Three more sperm start to fall behind, but Nick rigs a small propeller that aids the lagging sperm.  They press on courageously, determined to reach the egg by morning, after which the egg is in jeopardy of shriveling up and dying.  The biological clock is ticking against our intrepid heroes.

Meanwhile, Joy, believing that Desmond is sleeping around, uses spermicidal jelly to terminate her potential pregnancy.  A final battle against this onslaught becomes a perfect storm of sorts, taking the lives of four sperm.  Only Shirley (Shelley Duvall) and Tameel  (Wallace Shawn) remain.

The final climactic scene, just outside the egg, reveals a terrible moral dilema when we learn that Shirley and Tameel are actually the reincarnated lovers, Shiva and Parvati, from ancient India.

So as not to give out too much about the movie, suffice it to say that one of them sacrifices herself so that he can penetrate the egg, forming a barrier that will separate the survivor from his former lover — all for the greater good.

And then Joy finds out Desmond wasn't cheating on her after all.  They're pregant.  Bingo.