Barry Sonnenfeld’s Nine Lives is catnip for followers of such twenty-first century personages as Maru and Lil Bub, and perhaps only the most ardent feline fans will find Tom Brand’s adventures, funny, insightful, or even halfway engaging.
Brand’s Richard Branson-style billionaire (Kevin Spacey) is so obsessed with building the biggest tower in America that he neglects his second wife Lara (Jennifer Garner) and daughter Rebecca (Malina Weissman). A curse by a mischievous pet shop owner (Christopher Walken) traps Brand’s soul inside a cat that has been gifted to Malina for her birthday. The American Ragamuffin with Spacey’s voice, named Mr Fuzzypants, has to prevent a scheming employee (Mark Consuelos) from taking over Brand’s empire, which means that the character is both a real cat as well as a computer-generated ball of fur that emits yowling sounds.
If there’s a festive-season fable here – the movie is set during Christmas – it remains buried under pedestrian humour and contrivances that even the average television movie would avoid. The embarrassment of watching veterans sweat over trifles is somewhat alleviated by the sight of the fluffy coated Mr Fuzzypants. The presence of Lil Bub, the five-year-old internet phenomenon with genetic mutations, appears to be a last-minute act of desperation to shake the movie out of its mediocrity. But cats don’t respond well to surprises, and cat lovers, less so.
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