The Captain tortures himself with what was meant to be a family friendly review. Naturally, things go wrong…
Nine Lives
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a review and I thought why not come back with a review of a film so bad I’m sure it will run the gamut this year at the Razzies. That’s right, I’m doing Nine Lives! The idea originally was to torture Hank with the script, but no script ever surfaced. So I decided to just torture myself.
When I first watched the trailer for this film, I thought this had to be fake. It seemed like something you’d find Funny or Die doing a spoof of. The premise is so idiotic that no way it could be something actually coming to theaters… right?
I was wrong. It was real. Very real.
Most movies I go into I go into with an open mind. How can I know a movie is bad if I don’t watch it? That’s usually my response to anyone asking me why I just watched a really terrible movie.
But for Nine Lives I went into this already hating it. I went into Ghostbusters with an open mind, hell, even Jem and the Holograms I went into thinking, maybe it won’t be too bad. Though that could have just been what I needed to tell myself to get through it.
For Nine Lives I found myself not hating it. Shocking, I know. Don’t get me wrong, this film is shit. But it wasn’t so bad that it made me angry. Actually there was one part that did get me a little upset. When the family first gets the cat, named Mr. Fuzzypants, they don’t even lay out his food or litter box. And when they do, the next morning, they sit the litter box right next to his food and water dish.
YOU DON’T PUT THEIR KITTY LITTER BOX NEXT TO THEIR FOOD!!
Would you want the smell of shit while you’re trying to eat? Didn’t think so. I have a cat, a short hair tuxedo cat, which I’ve had to stop writing this review several times now because she won’t stop laying on my keyboard.
Anyway, she’s what you might call a sloppy pooper. Meaning mostly she loves to make a mess, leaving half the litter on the damn floor when she’s done. I made my mess, now clean it, human. Clean it from the floor!
Now imagine what would happen if the box was placed right next to her food and water. The litter would get in it!
If you’re making a movie about a cat, CGI or not, you’d at least get that fact right. Right? Maybe they were trying to show the family doesn’t know how to take care of the cat? But that shit isn’t just a cat owner thing, that’s a common sense thing.
Now that I’ve had time to think about it, thanks to my cat getting on my keyboard again, there was another moment that pissed me off about this film. But I’m getting a head of myself.
First, what is Nine Lives?
If you didn’t know, it’s a film starring Kevin Spacey as a talking cat. Though really the most unbelieve part of this film isn’t that the cat can talk but the fact Kevin Spacey is married to Jennifer Garner. And let me tell you, guys, yes the chemistry between these two was palpable, you can barely tell Jennifer Garner is an unlikable shrew and Kevin Spacey is a closeted gay man. Allegedly. I mean, I’m sure a ton of straight guys go to parks looking for sex with dudes. It’s what straight guys do, damn it!
Oh and Christopher Walken is in this, reprising his role from that Adam Sandler film Click.
Kevin Spacey plays Tom Brand, he runs a company named Firebrand. I think maybe they make parachutes or something… I mean, parachutes are actually a damn plot point, but they’re like this multibillion dollar company, trying to build the world’s tallest building. But they must make something other than that, right? How much money is there in parachutes?
Anyway, Tom is upset because his competition in Chicago is also building a new skyscraper and it is looking to beat them in height. I’m guessing they also make parachutes maybe?
Either way, Tom is pissed. And it’s his daughter’s birthday, all she wants this year is a cat. But Tom hates cats. Enter plot!!
I guess it’s worth mentioning since it is relevant to the “plot”, but also working alongside Tom is his son David. Played by Robbie Amell, who I’m pretty sure played Firestorm on the Flash tv series. Tom doesn’t seem to have much respect for him. He isn’t man enough to jump from a plane, using one of the company’s parachutes.
You know, I’m pretty sure the only reason this company sells parachutes is for plot reasons. You’ll see what I mean when I get to the end, because it’s fuckin’ stupid. It feels a lot like something added into the script after like writer number 5 was hired on. Yeah, it took 5 people to write this piece of shit.
Anyway!!
Also working alongside Tom is Ian, played by some guy I’ve never heard of. Not important. What is important is this guy is playing a sleaze ball. He fucked up the measurements on the building and is plotting to sell the company behind Tom’s back. But seeing as Tom owns 51% of the company, that isn’t happening without his say so. At least not while he is alive.
But when getting his daughter’s cat from Christopher Walken’s creepy pet shop, he takes a call from Ian. Instead of going to his daughter’s party, he meets with Ian on top of the new skyscraper they’re building.
Not liking Ian’s plan to cheat at the height difference, Tom fires him and is then struck by lightning. Now Tom’s body is stuck in a coma while he is stuck in the body of the cat. The main question I had after that was, what happened to the cat? Is he now in Tom’s body? But then the film asked that as well. They sure as fuck didn’t answer it, but at least it was present enough that they addressed it.
Also while up on the roof, after getting struck by light- No, wait, an antenna was struck by lightning, and it came crashing down on him, knocking him off the ledge of the building. Ian could have helped pull him back up but chose to let him die.
Here’s another weird thing I noticed. Tom’s family doesn’t seem all that upset about him being in a coma. The daughter seems almost ignorant about it. He’s just sleeping because he works really hard. No, you dumb bitch he fell through a fuckin’ window. He most likely could die!
I mean, they just go home and kind of forget about it for a while. They do have a new cat after all. I’d have to look this up, but I’m pretty sure the meows this cat lets out are human. Even before he got turned into the cat it sounded like a guy was making the cat noises.
Since I’m bringing up the fake cat noises, I might as well bring up the terrible CGI cat that accompanies it. Whenever they switch to real cat and CGI cat, which is often, it’s like whiplash because of how damn distracting it is. At one point I expected the daughter to turn to Jennifer Garner and ask why her cat kept turning into poorly rendered CGI. And oh god the cat puns. They never end! One might even call it a CATastrophe.
Who is this movie for? You’d think kids, right? But a majority of this is about business meetings to discuss building permits or corporate back dealings. You know, all the things kids love!
Tom tries his damnedest to communicate with his family, but nothing seems to get through to them. Eventually the daughter does start to suspect that the cat might be her dad, but of course the mom just thinks her daughter is having a mental breakdown.
While Tom is in a coma, Ian makes plans to sell off the company, making the family billions. That monster!
Now Tom aka Mr. Fuzzypants has to stop this… CATastrophe. I know I already used that joke but I can’t think of anymore words with cat in them. Damn it, I just thought of the word CATatonic. I should have used that earlier when talking about his coma.
Anyway, Tom overhears his wife talking to someone over the phone, wanting to meet up. Making things sound like she’s having an affair. To find out what is going on Tom performs this daring escape which was captured by some random bystander, making him famous.
Turns out his wife wasn’t having an affair but was meeting with a realtor… also played by someone from The Flash series. I’m guessing this film was shot in Canada, you can tell by all the Canadians popping up!
To stop the takeover of his company, Tom shows his son the piece of paper giving him the shares to his company. Ian unfortunately shredded one copy and fired David before he could show a copy to the rest of the board members.
Now David has to stop the ribbon cutting at the new skyscraper, I guess that’s when they make the company’s stocks public or something… all the makings of what kids love. That is if your kid is Barron Trump.
Earlier in the film Tom hands his son one of their parachutes, basically calling him a pussy. I’m shocked they didn’t make that joke.
David goes to the roof and… okay, so the way they set this up, it makes it seem like he’s about to commit suicide. Tom the cat sees this on the tv and rushes to stop him. Also happening at the same time, Tom’s body is getting taken off of life support.
Wait, he was on life support this whole time?
So here is the part that pissed me off. Two idiot security guards get the brilliant idea to film themselves shooting the cat with a tasergun. Apparently torturing a cat is hilarious and in their words would “break the internet”. Sure if you posted this on Motherless. It would go perfectly with the videos of girls pooping into each other’s mouths.
Tom makes it to the roof where he spots his son jumping from the building. Tom runs after him, also jumping. But David reveals he is wearing a parachute. Now it makes sense they sell parachutes! Get it!?
David is safe, but I guess fuck you, kitty because Tom finally wakes up just on impact, but what about that poor cat? Did a bunch of the spectators below just watch that cat get splattered on the ground? I think later they must have realized that so they wrote a scene at the end with Mr. Fuzzypants back in Christopher Walken’s sex shop… I mean pet shop.
He mentions he only has one more life now. So I guess he did explode when he hit the concrete below. At least that’s what I imagine would happen if a cat fell off the world’s biggest skyscraper. There’s now a permanent red stain by the entrance to this office building.
And that’s Nine Lives. David managed to save the company, Ian got fired and turned into a cat, Tom woke from his coma and Mr. Fuzzypants came back to life.
Talking animal movies is not a new concept. Remember the trailers for Kangaroo Jack? Where it had this what you thought was a talking kangaroo, so kids piled into the theater to see it, only to be disappointed when they found out the part where he was talking was just a hallucination by Jerry O’Connell. And remember when Jerry O’Connell was in movies?
Or what used to be my favorite as a kid The Adventures of Milo and Otis. That is before I found out this was actually a reedit of a Japanese film. A film in which they ran through several cats because the director kept killing them. Remember the scene when the cat hurt her leg? Yeah, that’s because the director snapped it on purpose. Childhood memories are great!
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