Review of Nine Lives (2016) by Charlie P — 19 Aug 2016

One of the most unbelievable films of the year, Nine Lives, takes a formula that died out in the late 2000's of a father being turned into something in order to learn a lesson about family bonding and exploits it to every possible level. Every cliche you can think of is present here, from the asshole relatives, the misunderstandings, the corporate villain and poop jokes galore. What makes this worse is that the tone and plot is really inconsistent and complicated than it should have been. For example, after a scene in which Tom does a cat related pun or action, it is immediately followed by depressing scenes of his son considering suicide (yes, you heard me) or Lara crying in the kitchen, which doesn't work for this kind of story which also rely's on making non stop cat puns, to get a cheap laugh, even if it doesn't match the tone of the scene.

Although there are a few funny scenes, with the cat drinking beer from a saucer and Christopher Walken's offbeat performance as the cat-store owner, aside from taking itself way too seriously at times, the CGI involving the production design of the buildings of New York and the cat itself is so bad, even the Garfield films, last decade looked better than this.

Overall, Nine Lives, does have some amusing moments, but it's still an overall "Cat-tatopshe" of a film that's just plain boring.