Saraghina (Fergie) and dancers perform Be Italian in the musical Nine. (David James/Weinstein Co./Alliance Films)

"Be Italian!" director Rob Marshall exhorts us with his new film, Nine. To judge from his movie, that means adopting a zesty accent, wearing dark glasses indoors and smoking incessantly ­­– in other words, taking on only the most superficial aspects of Federico Fellini's 8½, the immensely influential masterpiece on which this slick but uninspired musical is based.

To be fair, the musical – first seen on Broadway in 1982 and revived in 2003 – is meant more as an exuberant homage to Fellini and the lusty Italian cinema of the '60s than a faithful rendition of 8½'s intellectual and amorous conundrums. Even on that level, however, Nine is strangely mechanical.

Nine may boast half a digit more than the title of Fellini's 8½, but it's incalculably less of a movie.

Director Marshall has assembled the sexiest A-list cast an $80-million budget can buy – Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson, Fergie and, in the lead, perennial hottie Daniel Day-Lewis. Yet the resulting movie is about as arousing as a plate of cold pasta. Only Cruz, who seems to ooze eroticism from the pores of her skin, is anything close to Fellini-esque. When she's on screen, the picture briefly lights up, promising the playful fun of those Italian classics of yore. She's a lady you'd like to frolic in the Trevi fountain with. (Instead, a sedate Kidman is the one who visits said fountain, but she doesn't even get her toes wet.)

Italian film director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis, left) loves many women, including his wife (Marion Cotillard). (David James/Weinstein Co./Alliance Films) The screenplay, by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella (loosely based on the Arthur Kopit/Mario Fratti stage libretto), follows the broad outline of Fellini's film. Day-Lewis stars as Guido Contini, a great director about to shoot his ninth feature, an epic titled Italia. But he's facing a creative crisis. He's got a huge Roman-ruin set waiting for him on the Cinecitta studio lot, fabulous threads by his trusty costume designer, Lili (Judi Dench), and eager ingénues doing screen tests. All that's missing is a script.

Hounded by his anxious producer, Dante (Ricky Tognazzi), and his creative team, Guido escapes to a spa hotel in Anzio. His efforts to hide away and write are a failure, however. Carla (Cruz), his high-maintenance mistress, shows up, followed by his neglected wife, Luisa (Cotillard). Dante, meanwhile, brings the entire production crew to the hotel in the hope of kick-starting the picture. As Guido tries to juggle lovers and minions, further temptation is thrown his way in the blond shape of Stephanie (Kate Hudson), an American journalist for Vogue, who puts the moves on him in the hotel bar.

Forced to return to Rome, Guido confronts the star of his picture, his long-time muse Claudia, who refuses to shoot without a story. In Fellini's film, Claudia was the young Claudia Cardinale, more or less playing herself and glowing like a goddess descended among mortals. Here, embodied by Kidman, she's more like a governess who won't let the childish Guido have his way.

As Guido, Day-Lewis does a sedulous impersonation of Marcello Mastroianni, star of 8½ and Fellini's favourite avatar, but he has none of the soulfulness of the late Italian actor. After his wildly original performance in There Will Be Blood, Day-Lewis has reverted to merely gifted imitation, verging on parody. As a singer, he manages to make his way through his opening solo, Guido's Song, as if he were running a tricky obstacle course. (As a chain-smoker, though, his Guido is a champion who could go cigarette for cigarette with Mad Men's Don Draper.)

Guido's mistress Carla Albanese (Penelope Cruz) performs A Call From the Vatican. (David James/Weinstein Co./Alliance Films)The most inspired casting, aside from Cruz, has trashy Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas in the role of Saraghina, the seaside whore from Guido's boyhood. She's the one who gets to belt out that lusty tune Be Italian while flaunting her barely covered lady lumps. In a further sop to pop music, Hudson channels Britney Spears in an MTV-flavoured number called Cinema Italiano – one of a handful of new songs that the musical's composer, Maury Yeston, wrote for this film.

Yeston also provides a gentle tune (Guarda la Luna) for the 75-year-old Sophia Loren, who appears in flashbacks as Guido's mother and serves as the movie's one authentic link to that bygone cinema Italiano (even though she never made a film with Fellini). Marshall shoots Loren reverently, as if she were the Madonna in a grotto, with no suggestion that she was once Italy's spiciest movie export. Judi Dench is much livelier as Lili, who at one point breaks into a raucous ode to the Folies Bergere, complete with Edith Piaf accent. (Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a movie about Italian culture!) It reminds us that, long before her current matronly roles, Dame Judi played naughty Sally Bowles in Cabaret.

Cotillard, who won an Oscar for her Piaf in La Vie en Rose, does the film's most heartfelt acting as the betrayed Luisa. But again, for Fellini aficionados, her teary performance is no match for the incomparably composed one of Anouk Aimée in the original film.

Visually, the movie quotes Fellini here and there, but mostly it resembles Chicago, Marshall's 2003 Oscar-winning film of the Bob Fosse musical. Actually, it was Fosse who did the best musical variation on 8½ with All That Jazz. His semi-autobiographical 1979 movie, about a beleaguered, womanizing choreographer (Roy Scheider), had all the authentic passion of driven artistry that the ersatz Nine lacks.

Released in 1963, Fellini's 8½ was named in reference to the eight pictures he had directed at that point, plus one he'd co-directed. Nine may boast half a digit more than Fellini's title, but it's incalculably less of a movie.

Nine opens on Dec. 25.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.