An almost painfully unfunny comedy about a selfish billionaire who finds himself trapped inside the body of a long-haired housecat so that he can learn some generic, unfocused life lessons about loving more than himself, Nine Lives is a puerile case study in lazy screenwriting and Hollywood star check-cashing. The fact that it was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who started as the cinematographer best known for shooting the Coen Brothers' first three films and then distinguished himself in the 1990s as a director of smart, funny Hollywood fare like The Addams Family (1993), Get Shorty (1995), and Men in Black (1997), is testament to the depths to which his career has sunk, having arguably never recovered from the big-budget debacle that was Wild Wild West (1999). Sonnenfeld seems to have little grip on the film, and he and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub (also fallen from his days shooting blockbusters like Independence Day) give it a cheesy, garishly flat look that might work as a play on storybook aesthetics if it didn't look so willfully cheap.

Apparently on a short break from his hit Netflix series House of Cards, two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey phones in a broad performance as Tom Brand, the head of Fire Brand, a multi-billion-dollar multi-national corporation. Tom is the company's very public face, and we are introduced to him skydiving to a press conference atop the new building he is constructing in the heart of New York City, which will soon be the tallest in the world. At home he has a loving wife, Lara (Jennifer Garner), and a doting 11-year-old daughter, Rebecca (Malina Weissman), who hangs on his every word even though he pays her almost no attention and forgets her birthday. To make up for his decade-plus of fatherly thoughtlessness, Tom agrees to get Rebecca the one things she really wants for her birthday-a cat-even though he, no surprise, hates them.

After visiting a back-alley pet shop run by a mysterious "cat whisperer" named Felix Perkins (Christopher Walken in one of those one-note Christopher Walken performances), Tom's body winds up in a coma while his spirit is propelled into the cat he just picked up, which is named Mr. Fuzzypants. Thus, for the rest of the film, the five credited screenwriters come up with little more than various slapsticky hijinks involving Mr. Fuzzypants (sometimes played by a real cat, but more often by poorly done computer animation) in a palatial New York penthouse apartment that are regularly interrupted by a snooze-worthy subplot involving Tom's nefarious number two, Ian Cox (Mark Consuelos), conspiring with the board to sell Fire Brand out from under his unconscious body, an act that is challenged by Tom's adult son from a previous marriage, David (Robbie Amell), who is apparently still trying to win Daddy's approval.

Given the shallowness of Nine Lives as a whole, it is easy to ignore all the clumsy mixed messages about family values inherent in a story about a billionaire whose dream of building the world's tallest building simply so he can lay claim to the title of "World's Tallest Building" is presented as a goal worth defending. Instead, we should focus on the mismanagement of the film's comedy, which relies heavily on laughs involving Spacey's feline body engaging in various sub-Tex Avery pratfalls that the Humane Society clearly would not allow an actual cat to perform. To give one example of the film's visual wit: Sonnenfeld pans from a shot of Mr. Fuzzypants hanging precariously from a bar in an attempt to get Lara's attention to the familiar inspirational poster of a kitten hanging from a tree limb with the message "Hang in there!" (It may very well be a desperate plea to the audience.) To be fair, the incomparable Cheryl Hines does appear from time to time as Madison, Tom's boozy first wife who is inexplicably good friends with Lara, to deliver a few perfectly delivered bits of sarcasm and cynicism. She is about the only thing in the film with a pulse.

So, if you find a lengthy sequence involving the cat trying to get into Tom's liquor cabinet, or a Matrix-y shot of Jennifer Garner, shedding any last vestiges of her Alias-era awesomeness, jumping in slow motion after the cat and belly-flopping on a sofa, or the cat peeing inside an expensive purse and on an expensive rug, or Chistopher Walken just being Christopher Walken, then Nine Lives may very well be the summer movie for you. If you are irked by so-called family movies that excuse lazy storytelling, cheap visuals, easy sentimentality, and obvious comic targets because they're aimed at kids who are assumed to not need anything better, then you might want to steer clear. Go watch 87 minutes of YouTube cat videos instead.

Copyright © 2017 James Kendrick

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