The folks at the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation have just been handed a masterpiece: Almost every aspect of Nine Lives -- from the plotting to the acting to the direction -- seems perfectly calibrated to take home every "honor" they have to offer. This is 87 minutes of sadistic cinematic punishment from director Barry Sonnenfeld.
Kevin Spacey plays Tom Brand, an egomaniacal business tycoon with a penchant for skydiving, who has lost touch with his family. Christopher Walken plays the exact same character he did in 2006's Click: an eccentric stranger with the magical power to change one deadbeat dad's life. Instead of dishing out a reality-altering remote, this time he transfers Brand's consciousness into the body of a cat named Mr. Fuzzypants (meanwhile, his human body lies in a coma after a fall). Brand's wife (Jennifer Garner), daughter (Malina Weissman), and son (Robbie Amell) are left to grieve their father's uncertain condition, even though he's never taken the time to show how much he loves them. Feline high jinks and plenty of voice-over work by Spacey ensue as Brand's experiences as a cat teach him to see the error of his ways. Eventually, he is forced to race against time to regain his human form and prevent his company from being sold out from under him. Sounds fantastic, right?
Unless your children have a vested interest in corporate power struggles or IPOs, they'll be absolutely bored to tears. Nine Lives is essentially a montage of unfunny Internet cat videos slammed together with a maddeningly infantile body-swap script -- one credited to five writers, who shall go unnamed here. Spacey looks dead behind the eyes during every moment of this slog, and poor Garner can barely muster up a single convincing emotion. Rigidly acted and filled with foolish-looking CGI, Nine Lives is an unmitigated disaster; but while this reviewer will never get back the hour and a half he spent watching it, there's still hope for you.