Nine Lives review: “The film is not terrible.”

Nine Lives review: Has Kevin Spacey just used one of his 9 lives?

Nine Lives review, Luke Ryan Baldock, August 2016.

Nine Lives has had it rough in the press; and yes I wish it had been about a dog so I could make a ‘ruff’ joke. Take an Academy Award winning actor, Kevin Spacey, still riding high due to the incredibly received Netflix show House Of Cards, and shove him in a plot that recalls those Rob Schneider mock trailers from South Park. Many questioned whether the initial trailer was even for a real film. But let’s not poke too much fun just yet, afterall body swap comedies have always been around and some have been fantastic. It’s an easy comedy set-up that will often write itself, and if Spacey wants to earn a quick paycheque between lengthy shoots on his successful show then so be it.

Tom Brand (Spacey) is a business man with a big ego. He often puts his business first, making him late for family events and the like. His latest venture is to build the biggest building in North America, which doesn’t impress the board of his company, Firebrand, nor his duplicitous opportunist employee Ian Cox (Mark Consuelos), who all believe the company should be taken public. On his way to his daughter Rebecca’s (Malina Weissman) birthday, Tom decides to get her the cat she’s always wanted, despite the fact Tom hates cats. He stops by Felix Perkins’s (Christopher Walken) store, not knowing that Perkins is a mystical cat whisperer. Suddenly called to a meeting with Ian, Tom lands himself in a situation that puts him in a coma, and places his consciousness into the cat, Mr. Fuzzypants. As Tom learns what it means to be a part of his family, Ian instigates a take over of the company, while Tom’s son from a previous marriage, David (Robbie Amell) tries to protect his father’s company.

First of all, the film is not terrible and there’s nothing to truly hate about it. The writing of the characters is actually well done, especially that of the protagonist Tom Brand. As a lover of A Christmas Carol, the gold standard of atonement tales, I’m always disappointed when Scrooge is made too mean or unrelatable. Here, Brand may be a bit negligent towards his family, but he’s not a bad person. He’s never overly cruel to his workforce (Buddy from Swimming With Sharks this isn’t), he clearly does love his family, and all this makes the obvious and eventual redemption believable and relatable from the outset. The corporate angle is also surprisingly engaging, if a little dry for a kids film, and seeing a company deal with a CEO in a coma while his son tries to prove himself, certainly has its moments.

But other than myself, audiences probably won’t be turning up for corporate espionage and well written characters, what we really want are cat hijinks. Like many films recently, the film opens with popular cat videos from Youtube that you’ve probably seen a hundred times already. Each of these is infinitely better than anything involving the cat in this film. The comedy is almost non-existent, with the biggest problem being Spacey’s line delivery when in cat form. He’s fine on camera, and plays the role of Tom well and with his usual charisma, but you can here the boredom in his delivery as Mr. Fuzzypants. It doesn’t help that out of character lines such as ‘Seriously?’ and ‘Nailed it,’ are given to Spacey for some reason. Perhaps the original script saw a bitchy sassy teenage girl turned into a cat. Both these lines are also used twice each, and I’m pretty sure the same take was used each time. When dealing with the trauma of being turned into a cat, Tom also starts making cat-puns.

A terrible CGI cat stunt-double, some of the worst green screen effects, and an awkward if slightly daring finale, finish off what is a film that is probably better than anybody expected, but doesn’t even obtain chuckles from how stupid it all is. Anybody but Spacey in the role and Barry Sonnenfeld behind the camera would have seen this direct-to-TV. It’s not a CAT-astrophe, but it certainly isn’t (Sod it! Can’t think of another awful cat pun) good.

Nine Lives review by Luke Ryan Baldock, August 2016

Nine Lives is in cinemas now.