
Christopher Jenkins, co-directed and co-written “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin,” perfectly wraps the Plot of his new picture with the phrase “a love letter to cats,” in case you are wondering why the movie is simply titled “10 Lives”. The film, 10 Lives, is a computer-animated story of a lazy yet adorable cat a cross between dreamier Garfield and cat Tony from Coon’s Tins who has in fact reincarnated in several lifetimes, as one more than the title suggests. The film is a children’s cartoon. However, this isn’t the first time Kid-orientated content has been screened wider at Sundance: Last year, an unspectacular animated film called “The Amazing Maurice” somehow became one of the film’s biggest-grossing titles of the 2023 edition. It’s probably not how most people envision when they say ‘Sundance cinema.’ However, it does position itself as easily expandable worldwide.
When a young scientist Rose (from Simone Ashley) nearly collides with her car, she chooses to adopt a cat, Beckett (voiced by Mo Gilligan) who, in mid-storytelling, first appears as the pet of a scientist, ex-boyfriend Larry, after graduating with an undergraduate degree. Roam’s quest centers on postgraduate research that will provide answers for a crisis which is the extinction of the global bee community. She has a mentor, however, Professor Craven (Bill Nighy) He is the malevolent ghost of the child. Due to potential romantic competition for Rose, the assistant, and boyfriend of the main character – Larry (Dylan Llewellyn), she mistakenly uses her tails on him, dying his ninth life in the drama.
He is fortunate that an understanding angel (Sophie Okonedo) offers the cat ten more opportunities to stop being selfish and win Rose back.
While this can seem quite a conceptual conceit (rather dark even) to adults, younger children should enjoy the challenge of counting the 10 lives left. Each time Beckett is born again, he is depicted as a different animal in a different time period. Kids can see him transform into a horse, a cockroach, and a parrot, among others. But the actual fun begins when Beckett turns into a dog. Jenkins, along with his shack partners, Karen Wengrod and Ken Cinnamon, extract a number of funny situations from the enmity existing between cats and dogs. Regardless of the species they choose as pets, a substantial number of pet owners will enjoy the laughter-evoking caricature comparison.
But apart from the comic possibilities of such funny situations, “10 Lives” underlines larger themes. For instance, here is the filmmaker’s concern about ecology and global warming. There is a storyline about conservation research that seeks the idea of all species uniting to save the planet bees, in particular. Such themes may go almost unnoticed by kids, but they add deeper meaning to the movie. “10 Lives” incorporates the story of pet bees along with villain Craven’s intention of replacing the bees with robots in an unimpressive storyline typical of a low-budget James Bond knockoff. It’s ridiculous and has its illogical parts, nevertheless, it helps keep the focus on the real star of the picture.
A lot of times, Nighy has an out-of-the-world performance that makes one crack the hardest of laughs. Nighy, whose voice is as slippery as a lizard, is an actor who makes every intonation sharp and accurate yet comically warped as he depicts a character while poking fun at it. It would be difficult to surpass the image of that clipped voice saying, ‘Dickie numb bum’ for anyone. Other voice performances should take some notes.
Perhaps Nighy runs away with the film because all the other elements are much weaker. The animation appears to be a regular callback to ‘classic’ rubber films while also being quite bland and unremarkable. The facials of the animals mostly the head of Beckett before many of his alterations have more emotions than the faces of real people. The script has so many imitative incidents that one can hardly follow the plot. Zayn Malik, the pop star also known for his music in ‘10 Lives’, is cast as one of the two overly cute goons incapable of providing substantial help to Craven. But the characters are not particularly humorous and their appearance is so tangential to the main plot that they could be cut off entirely and nothing much would change. At least, those are Malik’s songs able to cause addiction though most of them are placed at the end credits.
Gilligan and Ashley have good chemistry and produce off-hand performances that seem paged. One can say that Ashley’s voice is sweet and filled with tenderness while Gilligan takes an interesting growl and makes him realistic as a cat. For Sundance, “10 Lives”, by all accounts, looks like an eccentric film, but, it is made stylishly (particularly Nighy’s contribution) to succeed in the global market.
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