Aug 27, 2016 03:33 PM
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Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner and Christopher Walken, one can only hope for some awesome movie after reading out this star cast. But when the movie is about a cat and Kevin Spacey is supposed to do a voice-over, it kind of slugs out. The whole idea behind human voices for animals doesn’t settle well in my head, but still there is always a time when this can change and I was hopeful.
Barry Sonnenfield’s Nine Lives is half-witted and poorly plot of comedy that fails mid-way, forcing humour and sloppy effects. What could have been super-engrossing turns plausible boredom.
The story is about Tom Brand(Kevin Spacey), a vaguely Trumpian New York entrepreneur obsessed with building tallest, longest skyscraper in America, is so caught up in his professional life that he neglects his second wife Lara(Jennifer Garner) and daughter Rebecca(Malina Weissman). While he was busy planning and chasing his dream, he forgets his daughter’s 11th birthday. So he decides to gift her something that will make her happy and something she always has been asking for, a cat. For 11th hour arrangements, he rushed in to a pet shop run by Felix Perkins(Christopher Walken) and then things began to turn vaguely.
Soon after, tom meets with an accident and finds himself to be trapped into the cat’s body named Mister Fuzzy Pants, while his body is in a state of coma. Through the cat’s eyes he begins to see what life he has been neglecting and what kind of colleagues he has, who are hell bent to sell off his company while he lays unconscious. He starts to see everything and to get back to his original body he has to fulfil the bargain.
The human-voiced cat speaks only to the audience whereas the other characters really cannot hear him. This makes for some cute hysteria in the movie, like when Tom sees his ex-wife wander into the room, he says, “Oh, look, Satan’s over!” or “No, thank you I have a rug!”, when Jennifer Garner directs him towards the litter box. The timing of such mocking dialogues really are the ups in this flick.
When an Oscar Winner actor decides to play the cat, the stakes are definitely high. Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Garner totally justify their roles, but Malina Weissman steals the show and the hearts. The cat sometimes is a real cat but then turns into poor work of CGI, a ball covered with fur.
We have been watching cat videos online, and when the movie starts with montage of cat videos, all of a sudden I realised that, French-Chinese co-production took these videos too far along and reeled it in a movie. You can see Mister Fuzzy Pants trying to scrawl on paper or pour a decanter of 50-years-old scotch. See hi leaping up the counters and walls! In the movies, some of these videos seem utterly amateurish and then you think why have they been included since they are not that laughable, maybe giggle-some.
The effects used in the movie is nowhere near perfect, in fact, after watching few loopholes I felt they are better than the chuckle-worthy one liners. Sheesh!
Based on the myth that cats have nine lives and we don’t, so we shouldn’t go about taking things for granted and know the value of everything in our lives.
Certainly what I was expecting, I wanted to see and laugh more, roll in my seat rather than get bored in it. But that won’t happen unless people who make these movie realise that only to hear animal talk is not going tickle our funny bones. They have to got to say some funny things after all.
1.5 stars
