NINE LIVES (2016)

Barry Sonnenfeld directed this most disappointing film with a screenplay by Gwyn Lurie, Matt R. Allen, Caleb Wilson, Daniel Antoniazzi & Ben Shiffrin. What is amazing to me here is that it took five people to write a script that is not only very poorly written but not at all funny. That it got the green light to go ahead with production is beyond me and on a 30 million dollar budget no less. The story details a very successful business man who is neglecting his family, especially his daughter and through a series of crazy circumstances finds himself reincarnated into a cat, while his body lies in a coma after an accident. Told by the pet shop owner (a “Cat Whisperer”) where he purchased the feline that he has one week to reconcile with his family or remain a cat forever. In order for a story of this nature to work you have to care about the characters first of all and then buy into this most fantastical of tales. Well, I didn’t care or buy into this film excepting for the first twenty minutes, but after the transformation I found everything to be quite preposterous. A fine cast of actors were assembled, but even Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner and Christopher Walken can’t save this sinking ship. And besides if you are going to center a film around a cat, at least make the animal likeable. There isn’t one cat in this film that is nice and the CGI effects contort the cats’ faces into something that is quite unattractive.