Nine Lives is about a competitive real estate business tycoon who has an accident that nearly kills him, but he ends up switching bodies with a fluffy cat and hijinks ensue while he learns a valuable lesson about the importance of spending time with his family. Nine Lives is a mashup of Freaky Friday, Click and YouTube cat videos.
Objectively Nine Lives is not worth anyone’s time, but somehow movie execs cynically decided to take Google results of most searched terms, which must have included cat videos and obnoxious New York real estate business tycoon because of the election, and created the plot of Nine Lives. Then they thought of which actors that I would watch in literally anything, came up with Christopher Walken as a mystical cat whisperer and Kevin Spacey as the mogul then waited for me to bite, which I did. I did not see it in theaters, but I did see it. Nine Lives is not a good movie, but for me, it was so bad that it was good. I used it as background TV, but even that is more airtime than Nine Lives merits.
Nine Lives is really not for kids, but it is not for adults either. Nine Lives is really sinister and cynical on numerous levels (suicidal execs, murder plots, business takeovers) while pulling punches on the other (business tycoon actually does love his family, has no interest in sexual extracurricular activities apart from his wife, who also loves him, actually loves his kids). Allegedly Nine Lives is an English-language French comedy film, which may explain why the cohesiveness of the absurd plot elements did not blend well together.
Nine Lives seems dominated by comic book action actors. Robbie Amell, who plays Spacey and Cheryl Hines’ son (in what world), is famous for his roles in The Flash and The Tomorrow People. The daughter plays young Kara on Supergirl. Zoom from The Flash appeared, and I briefly thought that everyone was going to die! And can we take a moment to discuss Jennifer Garner’s career. Remember when she was the hot spy kicking butt and taking names in Alias then was cast as Elektra in a couple of bad movies, including Daredevil with her ex-husband. Every actress is forced to become the mother and wife at some point, but she consistently seems to do it in the least appealing, lowest quality films ever! What happened? Initially she was the uptight wife in Juno and Butter, both independent film standouts, but then it is mommy roles in kiddie movies and schlocky family entertainment. The struggle is real, and mama has bills to pay.
With extreme lowered expectations, Nine Lives can be enjoyable as a curious train wreck, but it is not worth your time.