First, I'd like to thank that bonehead, Richard Roeper, for ruining the ending of this film for me. I was accidentally watching the "Ebert & Roeper" show and Roeper felt it necessary to tell me about the very last segment of this movie and explain how it was going to make me feel. Well, that explanation essentially gave away the ending because the feeling could have only been caused by one outcome and I guessed it right away. Once again: Richard Roeper = bonehead.

Anyway, this is precisely the kind of film that film critics, like bonehead Richard Roeper, coo about endlessly. However, I can tell you that this is also the type of film that makes most mainstream audiences shift around in their chairs, yammer on like baboons and walk straight out of the theater. That's exactly what happened in the screening I saw. There was audience chatter throughout the entire thing, including a number of people who apparently thought that exposing the audience to their opinions would actually improve things. In this case, it almost did.

Just to be clear, this movie had nothing to do with cats and there were no cats in it. This despite the title "Nine Lives." The lack of cats definitely brought this film in below expectations. Instead, it's a series of nine short pieces about nine different people, all women. Naturally, because we live in the post-modern, Tarantino-worshipping society that we do, these characters' lives intersect in small ways because every film involving a lot of different people must have some kind of intersection.

I guess the characteristic that defines this film is that all these little movies end in places where there's no resolution. This is just a way to piss people off, if you ask me, not get them to ponder the nature of life. Oh yes, life doesn't always provide resolutions. I GET it. What am I? Two years old? Anyway, so there's a scene where a woman puts a gun in her mouth and we move on to another movie. Diana (Robin Wright Penn) meets an old lover, Damian (Jason Isaacs). After they're done talking, she runs out to the parking lot after him, and the thing ends. Sonia (Holly Hunter) fights with her boyfriend and the scene ends. I can tell you all these things because the ending is not the point.

Then there's the scene with Maggie (Glenn Close) and her daughter, Maria (Dakota Fanning), at the end of the movie, which Richard Roeper ruined for me. I suppose that I should be grateful for at least having the empirical evidence I've been waiting for that Roeper is indeed a bonehead. It saved the movie from being completely worthless.