Spacey’s pedigree wasted on catastrophe

very, very much about the fact that his company’s new headquarters will be the tallest building in North America.

In the opening scenes, we learn that a new Chicago tower is going to be taller, then spend a good chunk of time listening to Tom bicker with one of his board members (Mark Consuelos’s Ian Cox) about a plan to take his company public. This is a family movie about cats? Please, somebody tell the three teams of screenwriters credited with penning this thing.

With some hocus-pocus none of those screenwriters care about enough to explain, Tom is put into a coma and his spirit is transferred to the ugly cat he has just (grouchily) purchased for his daughter’s birthday. Nobody knows about the transformation except Walken’s pet store owner, meaning that while the girl (Weissman) and Tom’s wife (Garner) worry about Dad at home, we get to listen to Spacey’s phone-it-in voiceover as Mister Fuzzypants tears the family home apart in an attempt to prove that he’s really a human trapped in a cat’s body.

The more convoluted of these antics involve a CGI cat, of course, suggesting Sonnenfeld and company don’t understand that those who comb the internet for funny cat videos are entranced mainly by the idea that a real cat is doing all those silly things. (Admittedly, this is an outsider’s theory.) A string of YouTube videos at the movie’s start only serve to remind cat lovers that they could see the real thing, minus all the phoney storytelling, at home for free.

Before letting them go home, Nine Lives gives viewers plenty of out-of-place ex-wifehating barbs, groan-worthy feline puns, an apparent suicide attempt and some acting that an experienced director should never have allowed onto the screen. And if you think it’s going to fail to include a “Hang in There, Baby” joke, Sonnenfeld will beat that sight gag into the ground to make sure you don’t miss it. Sometimes, though, letting go of that rope is the best thing a poor cat can do. – The Hollywood Reporter