Spacey’s ‘nine lives’ no class act
Nine lives, with Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner and Christopher Walken. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. 2/5
CATS have nine lives, but humans only have one, which is wasted on this movie.
Kevin Spacey has great sarcastic genius, but even he lost the plot.
A talking cat is a novelty, but an out of body experience is passé. There was Tom Hanks in Big and Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday, itself a remake of the film starring Jodie Foster, for example. And Jennifer Garner, starring in this movie, had a similar experience in 13 going on 30.
Inevitably when hit by lightning, minds get transposed or transported into an inhuman host, in this case, Mr Fuzzypants.
Spacey is an absentee father, Tom Brand, who owns his own company and is building the highest building on the Chicago skyline. At what he terms a “bored meeting”, his company executives resent running his company like a charity for his ego.
Eager to get rid of him, they support his assistant, Ian Cox (Mark Consuelos), who makes a bid for control of the company as soon as he can get his boss out of the way.
Meanwhile, Brand’s daughter, Rebecca, is turning 11 and wants a cat for her birthday. He is on his way home with Mr Fuzzypants from the cat store owned by Christopher Walken’s character, when he receives a call from Cox to meet him at the top of his new building.
Brand has already base jumped off the building and mocked his son by sending him a base jumping suit and a message: “For when you’re man enough”.
Brand meets Cox at the top of the building, which through his own error is slightly less tall than the tallest building in Chicago.
Lightning strikes, Brand and Mr Fuzzypants fall over the edge and Cox lets them fall. Luckily they fall back into the building through a window a few floors down. Paramedics take them to the hospital. Brand is in a coma and his wife Lara (Jennifer Garner) takes Mr Fuzzypants home, but all is not well with Mr Fuzzypants who is now in Tom’s body and vice versa.
In order to free himself from the cat’s body, Brand must learn to become a non-egotistical cat. This is not natural for a cat or for Brand. But if he does not free himself, Cox will take over the company and may also convince his wife to pull the plug.