Nine Lives concerns businessman Tom Brand (Kevin Spacey), founder and owner of the massive Firebrand Corporation. His work takes up most of his time, which means that he hasn't been the best husband to his wife Laura (Jennifer Garner), or the best father to his children David (Robbie Amell) and Rebecca (Malina Weissman). Lately, he has been obsessed with building the tallest structure in the Northern hemisphere, a skyscraper right in the middle of New York. It is this obsession that keeps him from attending Rebecca's 11th birthday party, and leads him to a lightning strike on top of the building. Tom wakes up as his birthday present to his daughter: a cat.
Tom's human body is in a coma in the hospital. As the cat, the film has him reconnect with his family, and learn that while there is no doubt that he actually loves his family, he's got to try harder to show them. Also, he has to find a way to fend off an ambitious employee that wants to make Firebrand go public. This is a pretty bizarre film in several ways. It is odd that these big Hollywood names are involved in the kind of film that might be considered filler by Fox Family Movies. It's strange that it tries so hard to make justifications for the protagonist's bad behavior. And it's odd that it builds a climax around corporate machinations.
If this was just a film about a mostly absent father learning to care for his family by becoming their pet cat, it probably wouldn't be great, but it would be harmless. What is so strange about this movie is how it doesn't really think its main character is really all that in the wrong. The story is weirdly invested in the fate of his company, a good chunk of the plot dedicated to preventing Firebrand from going public. In the end, building the skyscraper, which is so clearly an act of ego, is presented as the ultimately moral choice. It is just as important to the movie that a solution is found to make it taller than a competing tower.
It's really quite strange, the film peculiar in its dedication to lionizing the excesses of its main character. He may be a bad father, but he is still presented as an exemplar in a corporate world beset by schemers. Apparently, what we are missing in this capitalist society are old-school moguls who control every last aspect of companies, and are driven to make monuments to their own accomplishments. The film spends more time on this plot than on any meaningful interaction between Tom and his family.
The film isn’t even really very good as a cat movie. The visual effects are pretty egregious here, and the live animal work is pretty uninspired. Barry Sonnenfeld’s direction leans insultingly broad, because apparently children won’t get it unless the film pauses for its punchlines. The acting is pretty over-the-top, which is really saying something when you start out with actors like Kevin Spacey and Christopher Walken, who aren’t exactly known for their restraint.
Nine Lives is truly, deeply puzzling. One would think that given the people involved, someone would know better. This film starts out as your typical broad children’s film, the kind that is put together because filmmakers assume that kids don’t know any better. And then it gets weirder, the film tied up in strange corporation machinations that in the end try to lionize a man for building a monument to his ego. It is almost inconceivable, but here we are, stuck with a film that has Kevin Spacey voicing a cat, talking leaving behind the legacy of his name on a giant building.
My Rating:
