Yesterday, the trailer of the new Kevin Spacey-playing-a-talking-cat movie, Nine Lives, landed on the Internet, and everybody seemed to stop and take a look, because Christ, Spacey, you’re playing a talking cat in a movie! A movie with Christopher Walken, inexplicably, and Jennifer Garner, incomprehensibly, directed by Men in Black’s Barry Sonnenfeld, confoundedly. It seems lifted from an earlier era — the feel-good dorky family movie with a talking dog, or perhaps duck — which no amount of hastily added Instagram jokes can change. “A gloriously unaware relic from the VHS era,” says the Guardian. “As if it were made 30 years ago and then forgotten about until now.”
Everybody is having a good time on the Internet talking about it, and we are, too. I decided to ask my cat, Stella, what she thought of Kevin Spacey’s decision to play a talking cat.
Stella, what do think about Kevin Spacey playing a cat in a movie?
Oh, that’s a marvelous choice.
Really?
He plays killers so well — Frank Underwood, Keyser Söze, that serial killer in Seven.
I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.
Sure it is. Why on earth would Kevin Spacey play a cat in a movie if he wasn’t killing people?
Well, it looks to be more of a family comedy, about an billonaire businessman learning what’s important in life.
Which is murdering people.
Which is reconnecting with his family, gaining back the love of his daughter, and some other heartwarming stuff.
Are you sure this isn’t a dog movie?
He plays a cat named Mr. Fuzzypants.
Perhaps he’s being blackmailed into doing it.
You might be onto something.
Surely he’s killing small game, though? Insects? Birds? Squirrels? The family dog? The mailman? The cat is an apex predator, you know.
But a small, fluffy one.
Watch it, pal.
I watched the trailer, and it’s very lighthearted with no hint of the extreme predatory behavior you seem so obsessed with.
But he put someone’s head in a box in Seven!
That was sort of cat-like, frankly.
It was classic cat. Very inspiring to us kitties. Who else is in it?
Christopher Walken.
You should have just said that! I bet he kills an impressive number of people and small animals.
None at all.
Don’t be ridiculous. This is Christopher Walken — he’s ruthless. He put a watch up his butt in Pulp Fiction. What does he do in this movie?
He owns a mystical pet shop.
Oh.
It’s one of his minor roles.
Who else is in it?
Jennifer Garner.
Does her head get put in a box?
Stella!
So you’ve got Kevin Spacey and Christopher Walken in a cat movie, and nobody is killing anything, and nobody’s head gets put in a box — which, I’ll have you know, is the first thing I’m doing if you ever let me outside to get that squirrel. Who’s directing this, anyhow?
The Men in Black guy.
Well, that makes sense.
It’s does?
It makes no sense.
Very little about this makes sense.
You know, that last great cat movie was American Psycho.
American Psycho wasn’t a cat movie, Stella.
Get your head out of the sand, pal.
