Touchstone Pictures
Starring: Chris Kattan, Jeanette Miller, Irene Olga López
Directed by: Rob Pritts

Cat Out of the Bag Alert!  This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Corky Romano (Chris Kattan) is a bumbling veterinary assistant who is called upon by his family, who happens to be the mob, to infiltrate the FBI to discover the identity of a mole.

Kitty Cameo: Corky gets the chance to run the veterinary clinic and goes down the line of patients to greet them. An elderly woman named Phyllis (Jeanette Miller) is holding a calico cat whom Corky correctly deduces has “the trots.”

Featured Feline:  At the end of the row is Mrs. Hernandez (Irene Olga López) who explains she has brought in her cat Baby Jesus for his checkup. The carrier she has on her lap appears to be completely stuffed with the cat.

Inside the clinic, Mrs. Hernandez struggles to remove the large, long-haired and very fat cat from the carrier. The cat’s fur is horribly matted and he has one cloudy eye. In reality the cat actor was wearing a suit of matted fur made to make the cat look obese. The cat actor was reportedly only wearing the lightweight suit for brief moments at a time. How the cat’s clouded eye was achieved is not addressed in the American Humane Association’s on-set report, although it would appear to be a contact lens of some kind. All of the cat’s growls and screeches were clearly dubbed in.

Kitty Carnage Warning!  What follows maybe doesn’t exactly include carnage but it includes some very questionable humor at the cat’s expense. When Corky informs her that Baby Jesus will have to be put on a diet and given vitamins rectally six times a day (to which the cat makes an “Uh oh!” sound), Mrs. Hernandez tells him to kill the cat. Corky tries to talk her out of it, but she is firm.

Getting a cup of tea and trying to disuade her again (unsuccessfully), Corky pulls out a large hypodermic needle. He then manages to squirt Baby Jesus with the liquid inside the needle. According to the AHA the liquid was only water.

Knocking everything over in order to get paper towels, Corky manages to spill his hot tea all over Baby Jesus, who runs away. The on set report state the tea was not actually hot.

Corky continues to knock everything over, including a bird cage containing a parrot named Pierre. Baby Jesus gets hold of Pierre and runs away. The bird used in these shots was not real.

Corky chases after the cat and tries to get Pierre from him, resulting in a tug of war between him and the cat. According to the AHA, the cat actor’s trainer stood in for actor Chris Kattan to make sure the tug of war was not done too roughly.

This would appear to be yet another appearance by cat actor Pearl who formerly co-starred in the film Assassins.

Final Mewsings: Humor is clearly subjective but cats (and cat lovers) probably wouldn’t find this funny.

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