Movie Review: The Nine Kittens of Christmas (2021)

Synopsis: After establishing a successful veterinary practice with her boyfriend in Miami, Marilee flies home to Oregon for the first time in five years so she can spend Christmas with her sister's family. However, when her boyfriend finds a reason not to travel with her, leading to their breakup, she starts the holiday on a sour note. Fortunately, she finds a distraction by helping her former boyfriend, Zachary, find homes for nine kittens abandoned at the firehouse. The movie is also known as Nine Lives of the Holidays.

Who's in it? The movie stars Brandon Routh, Kimberley Sustad, Gregory Harrison, Stephanie Bennett and Linden McMillan.


Review: My wife came across this movie over the weekend and added it to our library. I knew it was a sequel to another film we had not seen yet but, since it had kittens and we were both in the need for some cuteness last night, we ended up watching it.

The kittens, as expected, were adorable. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie really didn't do much for me.

One of my problems with this movie was I wasn't a huge fan of Marilee (Sustad) and Zachary (Routh). The chemistry just wasn't there. Either that or Routh's unemotional performance might have just made it seem that way. If I'm being honest, I kind of liked the guy she dumped (Nathan Witte) better. Yeah, they had different priorities but he at least seemed to have a personality. Maybe if I had seen the first movie, the whole Marilee/Zachary thing would have made more sense.

I also feel like the movie should have spent less time on their rekindled romance and more time on the kitten adoptions. I would have been much more interested in learning more about the people who were opening up their homes (and hearts) to the rescued animals and how the kittens would change their lives instead of that being more of a background story that had to share screen time with a bunch of other stuff.

Another disappointment from this film was the part about the advent calendar Marilee's sister (Bennett) discovered, which was left as a present from their deceased mother. As I told my wife, that seemed like something that could have made a great Christmas movie on its own but, instead, it was just another subplot in a movie that already featured a breakup, a rekindled love, kitten adoptions and a fire chief's retirement. What a waste.

Final Opinion: The kittens were cute. Other than that, I just wasn't a fan of what was, at best, an average film.

My Grade: C

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