Billionaire Tom Brand has devoted his life to his work and his professional success, while virtually ignoring his wife Lara and their daughter Rebecca. On Rebecca’s birthday, he gets talked into buying her a cat (of course he hates cats) from a strange pet store. On the way home, Brand has a bizarre accident and wakes up in the body of the cat. Now loved by his family under the name of Mr. Fuzzypants, Brand tries to figure out what happened to him, even as he rediscovers his family.

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On the plus side, there are Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner, Christopher Walken and director Barry Sonnenfeld (Men In Black). It doesn’t help. Nine Lives is as purely formulaic as a Christmas TV movie. A moralistic fable that applies the usual magic spell and gags for a fish-out-of-water character who’s forgotten the true value of life (family, kindness, humility, love), this Hollywood flick is in reality too absorbed with the things it deems “bad”: money, success, business. It will surprise only the most innocent children. Somewhere between an endless Lolcat video with special effects and a wheezy narration exercise by a legendary actor, Nine Lives* is awful and unnecessary. Kevin Spacey probably needed a new swimming pool.