Let’s get this out of the way: Daniel Day-Lewis can’t sing. When he unleashes his brand of back-of-the-throat vibrato in Nine, he sounds a bit like he’s gargling a milkshake. (Gargling it up!) Thankfully, he only has two numbers in Rob Marshall’s big-screen adaptation of the Tony-winning musical—though it’s hard to shake the feeling that Marshall expects you to give his leading man a pass because, well, it’s Daniel Day-Lewis. In fact, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Marshall hopes you’ll give the entire cast a pass, based on the promise of their collective resume. Too bad so few of the starlets actually deliver.

Saggy singing aside, Day-Lewis is appropriately slick as Guido Contini, an Italian director based on Federico Fellini who’s as skilled at romancing his leading ladies as he is at coaxing powerful performances out of them. Ten days before the cameras roll on his latest picture, he has no script, no budget, and a chorus line of past and present female influences dancing through his head. Day-Lewis sells Contini’s existential angst—and irrepressible id—but in light of real-world sleaze stories like Tiger Woods’s, asking us to root for the fictional director to overcome his pre-production dalliances is a hard sell.

What makes Nine such a letdown, though, is the clunky integration of musical numbers that should have buoyed the whole movie. Each feels like a forced attempt to give the cast of supporting actresses—Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, and the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie, among others—a chance to vamp, and with one exception, they’re flashy, hollow set pieces. It’s not until Marion Cotillard, who plays Guido’s wife, Luisa, mourns the impending death of her marriage in "My Husband Makes Movies," that Nine stops to show a little heart.