Also took the hit and went to see the Kevin-Spacey-Had-a-Mortgage-Payment-or-Possibly-Someone-Kidnapped-His-Wife movie Nine Lives. In this cinematic gem, Spacey is a power-hungry New York industrialist who wants to build the largest building in North America and is competing against another building in Chicago. They are building taller than the Chicago building but that building has a secret plan that will make it taller at the last minute. Spacey’s board of directors is tired of this fight and are worried about the bottom line so, when Spacey gets into an accident, they attempt a hostile takeover by placing the privately owned company on the stock exchange. Can his aggrieved son save the company before it’s too late? Oh, and Spacey gets transferred into the body of a cat.
My point being, there’s a lot of board room politics going on in a movie about a man stuck inside a cat. And there’s a weirdly scattered number of jokes for adults but not enough to suggest this movie was being made to appeal to both kids and old curmudgeons. And, hey movie, you may have hid it behind other cat-based songs, but I see that Ted Nugent / Cat Scratch Fever album hiding back there.
But mostly the movie gets its humor from cats being cats – or dubiously animated CGI cats anyway. And, to that extent, the audience I was with seemed to really find the movie funny. They laughed at the cat jokes. I like cats and I loved a good YouTube cat video but most of this, nah, not very good. In fact, the movie opens with a series of YouTube cat videos that are funnier than this movie.
But, here’s the thing, the movie isn’t as much of a disaster as part of me hoped it would be. It looks, to me, like a five minute Saturday Night Live sketch turned into a 90 minute movie…. but it’s actually not that bad, ultimately. It’s not incompetently shot and, sure Spacey is phoning it in but Jennifer Garner and the little girl playing their daughter were doing their job. The special FX were kind of bad but I was expecting worse. And while deeply wrong-headed for a kid’s movie, all the board room politics were… I dunno… not terrible, I guess?
So, yeah, maybe you’d find this a gentle amusement if you love cats or have a kid who wants to see the funny cat movie. You might find something in it worth watching. I suspect dog people will want to burn it with fire though.
Final note: not a tie-in to the cat food. Nine Lives was not a corporate sponsor… which is probably a good thing considering how they mock the awfulness of wet cat food.
Another Final Note: People who makes movies… if you bring a cat home for the first time, you don’t lock him outside your bedroom and let him have free reign over your house, especially without having put out food and a catbox. Jeesh. Did you do no research? are you monsters?
Final Note 3 – there’s a movie out there called A Talking Cat?!? ( with the punctuation) where Eric Roberts plays the voice of a talking cat. Apparently it’s a glorious train wreck and now I want to see it. 2.5 on IMDB and not available streaming.
Score: 69