Cats 2019

[4.5/10] Cats is a terrible show. Look, I know that 1980 was a different time, and it made a statement of glamour and garishness that rang true at the dawn of the loud, over-the-top eighties. But it’s a vapid, goofy, cornball cartoon of a stage production. I can intellectually acknowledge the reasons for its success, but I’d be lying if I said I saw much artistic merit in it, from my admittedly haughty vantage point of four decades later.

Cats the movie is bad too. It is garish and nigh-incomprehensible in places and rough to look at for most of its runtime. But it is, in many ways, a faithful translation of the show, for good and for ill, to the silver screen. I am loath to slate director Tom Hooper and company too harshly for much of the film’s failings. They dutifully capture the bizarre, untethered from reality or taste trappings of the source material and give it the most honest translation to cinema you could expect. It’s still bad, but much of its badness is a product of the source material.

What’s fair to chastise Hooper and his team for are the additions that are unique to the film. Hollywood demands things that Broadway, the most mainstream of theater outlets, does not. So this version of Cats includes several elements that are entirely absent from the original play, like a protagonist and perspective character, and an antagonist, and a love story, and...you know...a plot.

Most of these are fine enough but totally unnecessary. Little is added from wasting Idris Elba’s considerable talents in the guise of a malevolent feline Willy Wonka. An undercooked romance does next to nothing to spice up this hairball of a musical. And more directly framing and explaining the meaning and purpose of the “Jellicle Choice” is probably a necessary concession to general audiences, but doesn't actually provide a backbone to what one enterprising tweeter accurately described as a series of character introductions before one of the cats gets to die.

But for what it’s worth, one of the few changes Hooper makes that’s worth applauding is the addition of Francesca Hayward as Victoria, the protagonist cat. The character isn’t exactly well-written, but still, making her the audience surrogate for the bizarre world of these felines is a canny choice that helps add some meager amount of sense to this bewildering dervish of spasms and fur. Beyond that structural choice, Hayward gets one of the few new songs in the piece, and “Beautiful Ghosts”, as the rare track not weighed down by the synth and sonic suckitidue of the eighties’ musical stylings, soars as a more intimate and moving number amid the rest of this aural assault.

She’s also one of the few performers in the piece whose expressions and gesture shine through the awkward costuming and computer-generated grotesquerie. That’s the thing about Tom Hooper’s direction. Film fans make fun of his close ups and smaller approach to big musicals, but he gives his actors just enough rope to either swing like nobody’s business or hang themselves.

Those extended takes and frequent tight shots on the performers’ faces means that actors like Hayward are able to make an impression, breathing life into a player whose personality is ninety percent defined by body language and facial expressions of innocence and curiosity. By the same token, Ian McKellen, who could read a sandwich shop menu and make it moving, has the acting chops to take a novelty song and render it heartbreaking given the cinematographic focus on his performance.

Conversely, Hooper’s approach gives other performers who are either less adept or simply hobbled by the film’s off-putting visuals, nowhere to hide. Jennifer Hudson, who can sing the hell out of the famed “Memories”, distractingly overemotes throughout. Frankly, so does most of the cast. Some of that’s assuredly a deliberate choice among the performers for a big movie that is more style than substance, but often it’s laughable at moments when it’s not meant to be.

Worse yet, Cats is the unfortunate type of movie musical when, for however many of the singers can’t act, more of the actors can’t sing. The film tries to mask Idris Elba’s contributions, by giving him half a line to croon here and there, and Judi Densch muddles her way through, but the awkward talk singing that’s present throughout and unavailing vocal tones from the likes of Taylor Swift of all people leave the already middling songbook of the movie in cat-clawed shreds.

And yet, somehow, that’s not the biggest misstep in the picture, which can only be the array of god awful CGI monstrosities that Hooper parades around from scene-to-scene. To be charitable, you can view the look of the titular cats as ambitious, something meant to represent the imaginative anthropomorphism of the stage show updated with animatic tricks and tidbits that wouldn’t be possible on the stage. Once again, you can feel Hooper and his team channeling the spirit of their predecessor and trying to represent it fairly.

But good lord is this movie ugly. The seemingly hot-glued-on faces tenuously attached to the felines’ writhing bodies plummet into the uncanny valley and never crawl their way out. The twitching tails and ears don’t feel like expressive parts of the singing animals; they feel like bewitched appendages jerking and moving on their own. The backdrops have the same unreality of a Baz Luhrman feature or, god forbid, the live action Alice in Wonderland films, lending to the sense of this thing as one long fever dream. And the cats seem to grow or shrink in size with no rhyme or reason. Rest assured, whatever the source material’s musical faults, the movie version of Cats matches it with visual sins just as glaring.

That is, if you’ll pardon the expression, the truth about Cats. Many of its worst features -- its meager score and imbecilic lyrics, its nonsensical premise, its plotless lumpiness -- came along with the blueprints. Those things could have been ignored or redone (and some of them were), but at some point you’re just making an entirely different movie. Still, plenty of the off-putting things about this cinematic clump in the litter box are choices that Hooper made: the hideous visual approach, the miscast performers, the feeble attempts at bantery comedy.

With that, though, this film may still be the truest adaptation of the source material we’ll ever see. It is large and loud and dumb and garish, and it smacks the audience in the face with every choice it makes. For better or worse, in 1980 or 2020, on the stage or on the screen, that is Cats through and through.

First off, let's remember that this is based off a Broadway musical, a musical where people dress as cats. Some people have complained about how the people looked, that it was creepy to see them dressed as Cats, but that's exactly what they do on Broadway. So if you're going to complain about people dressing as Cats you were probably never going to see this anyway. Having said that, the hype and all the criticism seems unfair. If you don't know the musical or don't enjoy this kind of stuff, that's fine, but don't judge it based on that because Cats is a weird musical in and of itself but it's highly regarded by many.
Now, this is a bit different from the original as they added a lot to the character of Victoria, but I actually liked that. It's gives you this introduction into the world of the cats through her eyes. And I liked the interactions and the new song. Overall, I enjoyed it and I think a lot of the criticism comes from people who don't understand or appreciate this type of genre. I know there are those who prefer the original broadway play but I thought most of the singing was great, the dancing was great and I enjoyed it.

Everyone complains about their job, it's just what we do. No matter what you do for a living thank yourself that you don't have the job of writing the synopsis to go on the back of the Cats DVD case as it'd be a truly impossible, tortured job. The only comfort anyone involved in this feline fantasy chore of a 110 minutes is that they sure walked away with their share of the (even more insane) budget. Even Idris Elba, who managed to sell the PG13 version of Roland in the recent Dark Tower, struggles to hide the fact he evidently didn't want to have the job of the hat wearing villain in this musical monstrosity.

Cats opens up with a scene of a cat being dumped from a bag into the streets of London and soon met with a cavalry of crazy human shaped cats content on singing about everything and anything; many of the songs have little to no context such as an early song about how cats must have three names, a point that's soon dropped and never mentioned again. I've honestly never seen a film before where I've come away having no idea what it was actually about, move along Kubrick and 2001 Space Odyssey, the real question is what this is all about and why anyone would spend the $80 to $100 million making this nightmare. Is this how my grandmother felt watching The Matrix*?

Speaking of the budget, surely majority of the money was allocated on the PR machine as its evident that the film is unfinished; in Judi Dench's introduction she is wearing a gold ring with a green gem on her left hand (a cat in the background is also wearing a ring) later this disappears and is replaced with a smaller ring, rumoured to be her wedding ring, on her left hand. Sometimes the cats have furred hands, sometimes they don't bother animating that in. The whole film suffers floaty head syndrome, caused by issues when the animators can't or don't have time to track the skin onto the actors giving the whole film even more uneasy feel to the look and movement.

I suppose musicals don't have to adhere to the three act structure however this film doesn't seem to have any structure to it whatsoever and wraps up with a cat chosen by the Dench cat as the one who will ascend the skies in a magic hot air balloon, I couldn't explain that cat's background all I know is 1) she cries a lot when singing and 2) she seems to have some history with Elba cat who has magical powers; I shit you not, he's not even the only magical cat in this Lloyd Webber acid trip. Elba cat frequently turns up at the end of the musical numbers to magic a cat off to a barge on the river Thames that is ran by Ray Winstone cat (and yes, the former hardman has a number of his own, sans any auto tune) as apparently the cat who sings the best song shall be the one who rides the balloon? I've never seen the Broadway musical Cats before so I can't speak whether that follows any kind of internal logic to it however the "cats" here wear clothing, sometimes, (the number with a dozen cats tap dancing on a railway line has to be seen to believed) whilst the Ian McKellen cat wears gloves with the fingers cut off and a coat over an old cardigan yet drinks out of a bowl of water (whatever McKellen got paid, wasn't enough) and Rebel Wilson cat unzips her cat skin twice to reveal a dress on top of another cat skin (I am not making any of this up, honestly).

Though I am sure neither the half-dozen people that went missing from my screening or my son, who kept leaning over to inform me that he didn't understand "what is going on", will not agree with me I would 100% recommend that everyone puts this on their bucket list as proves that when Hollywood misses the mark it always best they do it in spectacular fashion. One thing for sure I will not have a tipple before bed tonight as I don't want to risk any of this thing haunting my dreams.

*somehow The Matrix with all its ground breaking SFX and set pieces cost $20 million less to make than Cats.

Not sure what to say about this movie. As a musical theatre love when I saw cats advertised I just had to go and see it.

Now the first thing that bugged me was the CGI which as most people have already established from the trailer was absolutely terrible. These were not exactly cats but more like humans in furry suits and as it is certified as a U by the BBFC this bugs me. Along the many scratching of the private parts that were also contained within this movie.

Something I did like however is the choreography, it was beautifully time and the cinementagrohy was absolutely astounding as we could the cats against the night sky and it looked really beautiful accompanied by the songs which for the most part were great although there were a few that weren't that good but that is to be expected.

One of my main issues was the movie was advertising a lot of well established stars to be in this movie. Jennifer Hudson and artist of the decade Taylor Swift being two of them. I was really looking forward to seeing these as they are well established in the music industry. Also Taylor Swift collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the writing of some songs for this musical but she didn't get to sing them, instead she got to sing some annoying song in an even more annoying accent.

I think this movie is pretty good but I would say only give it a go if you're well accustomed to movies of a heavy musical genre.

Cats absolutely does not deserve the hatred that it got!

I though it was an outstanding movie about belonging, redemption, friendship, loss, forgiveness, hope, and acceptance.

I must admit, the first few minutes of Cats were a bit jarring: the human-cats look unsettling on all fours for an extended period of time, which is almost exclusively how they were for much of the introduction (The vast majority of the movie they're on two feet so that aspect improves quickly). Robbie Fairchild and Francesca Hayward are phenomenal actors, and the facial motion capture brilliantly preserves the the emotion they bring to the film.

Watching Cats a full year after it was released was an interesting experience. I'd say it's an experience similar to what Victoria the main character experiences in the movie herself. The main plot is about regular cat who is actually tossed into a bizarre and unknown world with weird characters and a bunch of nonsense, spectacle, bizarre other cats, traditions, and situations completely foreign to her. Watching the first 20 minutes of Cats I felt like Victoria: "How did I get here?" "What the heck is going on?" "What am I supposed to do with myself?"

I began warming up to Cats at the same time the Jellicle cats were warming up to Victoria. The Jellicle cats welcomed Victoria to their cat group, and they wanted to teach Victoria the ways of their society. The cats are whimsical, but they have one super special ritual that Victoria is introduced to: a ritual that the evil wizard cat wants to steal. With that, we have the basic plot of Cats.

It continues on: Victoria learning more about the Jellicle society, about the bad guy, and the movie progresses naturally from there. It's a rated PG movie released during Christmas time 2019, it's not going to have any insane plot twists like Se7en (1995) or Upgrade (2018) and I thought this movie was wonderful overall. You get accustomed to the GGI quickly, and the good pacing and storyline strongly overshadows the small complaints there are about the visuals.

While watching the intro I would have rated Cats a 4/10. Middle of the movie, 5.5/10, but the ending of the movie, and thinking back on it while listening to the music and the credits, Cats a solid 6.5/10 in my book, rounded up to 7 in the Trakt system. I would recommend you watch this movie. I re-watched this again two days after seeing it for the first time and am boosting it to a 9/10 rating. I absolutely love this movie. Wait, no. The ending is.. strange. 8/10

The rest of my thoughts here might contain soft spoilers about popular and well-known big moments in the film, but any hard spoilers have been marked.

When Victoria met Grizabella, I thought that was remarkable: a newcomer not understanding why someone had been cast-out and shunned by her society goes to show that a fresh perspective, and listening free of judgement can go a long way to help someone out who is hurting.

Things I liked:
The facial motion capture. The overall theme. The pacing. Jason Derulo. The performances of Francesca Hayward and Robbie Fairchild. I liked when the magician cat tried a couple times to bring back the grandma cat, then everyone started cheering for him and singing their support of him, that was a heartwarming event in the movie Ian McKellen's number. It was emotional and portrayed a lived-in world that didn't need any over-explaining about his history, and his past as an actor.

Things I did not like: (i have a lot of things nit-picky to say, these are all minor things even though there a lot of them)
Yeah, the mice and the cockroaches are irredeemably terrible, in all aspects. The inconsistent size of the cats in respect to their environment? At the end of the movie (this is not a spoiler) there is a statue that the cats are sitting on and standing around. That statue looks just AWFUL in the CGI. If you pay close attention to where the characters hands and feet meet the 'stage' or background, you can tell that it doesn't 100% match up flawlessly. Rebel Wilson has a zipper-down cat fur costume that she wears OVER her performance outfit. I don't understand the logistics of that. Also, many characters wear wither fur coats, or actual tennis shoes and / or flats or heels. Who is making these shoes for these cats? Tap-Dancing.

Things that surprised me: I didn't know that Taylor Swift was a henchman for the bad guy! This movie made me cry a couple times! This movie was overall an enjoyable experience. I'm a HUGE Taylor Swift fan, but I was pleasantly surprised that Jason Derulo just brightened up and improved every single scene he was in. He played a big role in most of the movie, not just a one-off scene as Swift had. Ian McKellen, I was worried it would be a sad, confusing, frustrating affair, but his number was wonderful. I honestly decided to watch Cats as a half joke, half morbid curiosity but I was very pleasantly surprised.

An outsider is introduced, an insider had been cast out, a pre-established group set in their own ways and tradition but is willing to listen to the newcomer, the same group seeing the fresh perspective of the newcomer and finding forgiveness and understanding toward the one they had previously cast out, and finally, acceptance of the newcomer and introducing her as one of their own.