Film review: Nine Lives *

By Alexia Evripidou

With heavyweight names including the talented Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner and master of coolness Christopher Walken it’s a pretty safe bet that Nine Lives must at the very least be ok; I mean how bad can it really be? The answer: pretty bad. So bad, that one can’t help but question why big industry players like these would assign their name to such a poor film, if it wasn’t for making a quick buck or two.

The plot is the 1980’s favourite body swap. The principles behind it being that two people (or human and random cat in this situation) swap bodies and therefore lives. There is usually a process or journey if you will, where one or both reach an epiphany about the other character’s life as well as their own. They potentially repent if need be, making all things good again and right at the last minute, by magic, they are back in their own bodies and lives again. No one else is the wiser and all lessons have been learnt. If done well, this can be a lighthearted and fun type of film to watch: Big with Tom Hanks (1988) was a classic and Freaky Friday (2003) with Jamie Lee Curtis was not bad at all.

Nine Lives follows the body swap ‘learn and redeem’ narrative, only it doesn’t quite gel together as an all rounded movie. Parts work ok but it’s never going to be easy making it work when a character swaps places with an animal, let alone imbuing a cat with a human voice and physical behaviours. The film is about grumpy billionaire workaholic Tom Brand (Spacey) who has little time for his family and even though it’s his second time around in the marriage and kid ring, he doesn’t seem to have learnt from his shortcomings the first time round. He has a new wife Lara Brand (Garner) and young daughter Rebecca Brand (Malina Weissman) as well as an ex wife and older son, who’s following in his father’s footsteps, working with him in the family construction business; Firebrand.

It had the potential to live up to the hype with such a good cast but Spacey was badly cast and Garner’s potential wasted. The writing was weak and readily forgettable, the one thing that stuck unfortunately, was that Spacey looked far too old to be the little girl’s father. I say this not because of his actual age but because they tried to make him look younger with hair dye and a shocking orange tan, that he could not help but stand out looking all shades of wrong.

So the story begins, setting up with what a mean and busy person Tom is. It’s his little girl’s birthday and he has no idea what to get her, even though she has asked for a cat. Tom hates cats, still, he’s left without a choice so late in the day and so pops into Mr Walken’s (Felix Perkins) cat shop and with a ‘bah humbug’ type of exchange with Felix, he reluctantly buys Mr Fuzzypants. Walken’s performance was convincing, considering what little decent material he had to play with (I’ve yet to see Walken in a role that he couldn’t pull off!) Running late for his daughter’s birthday he rather selfishly (an apparent common characteristic of his) makes a detour to the skyscraper his company is building. And lo and behold, there’s a thunderstorm and lightening strikes, swapping Tom with Mr Fuzzypants. Tom now embarks on a journey of self discovery in the form of the four legged feline, which initially he rejects with vigor, till it begins to dawn that he needs to figure this out and make amends.

The main issues I have are, what does this film want to be and who is it trying to attract? Only the extremely young might derive much enjoyment from it. It felt cheap and confused. There was a serious subplot running through with a ‘baddy’ trying to take over the business underhandedly with a dark murderous moment, as well as implied suicide; not suitable for the young then.

On a positive note, there was a funny scene involving a drunken cat and Walken’s cat whispering but overall the film felt like it was trying too hard and delivered very little. Disappointing.

Nine Lives *
DIRECTED BY Barry Sonnenfeld
STARRING Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner, Christopher Walken
USA 2016 87 mins