“Cats” is the “Battlefield Earth” of musical films.
There, I said it.
“Cats” is so bad, you might swear off pussy for the rest of your life.
That’s right, I said it again.
Timothy Leary himself never possessed enough lysergic acid diethylamide to make “Cats” make sense, although the film might be more enjoyable in the midst of a full-on hallucinatory trip.
Boom. I can go all day.
Now, in the spirit of complete transparency, I should say that I have never seen “Cats” the stage musical, but given this film adaptation, I am completely baffled as to how this is one of the longest-running, most successful theater productions on record.
Based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Books of Practical Cats, the stage show and the film follow a group of alley and house cats known as Jellicles, who are preparing for a special ceremony where one of them will be selected to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn.
In the film, however, there is no exposition offered for what sounds like a garden-variety euthanasia, or why it’s so important that this annual culling must take place.
As directed by Oscar winner Tom Hooper, “Cats” is little more than a bombastic eye-fuck of CGI imagery that completely squanders the talents of two Oscar winners (Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench) and one Oscar nominee (Ian McKellen).
Thematically, and artistically, nothing works. Worse, nothing makes sense.
Some cats, like Idris Elba’s villainous Macavity, wear clothes. Most other cats do not.
Speaking of Macavity, he can apparently magically appear and disappear (and does so in the stage production), but in the film, there’s no explanation given for this ability, other than he’s a master criminal who is never caught at the scene of the crime.
Some cats, like Victoria (Francesca Hayward), kind of resemble an actual cat, even with boobs that had to have been digitally flattened. Others, like Bustopher Jones (James Corden), more closely resemble Mike Myers in “The Cat in the Hat.” And then there’s Dench, who plays Old Deuteronomy, the feline matriarch who picks which kitty is going to cat heaven. Dame Judy looks just like Bert Lahr as The Cowardly Lion in “The Wizard of Oz.”
Some of the elaborate sets feature giant props designed to make the cat characters appear, you know, cat-sized. Other sets, however, including a railway yard, are not built to the same scale, so the cat actors look absolutely tiny while singing and dancing along a rail.
One particular sequence, which I’m sure Hooper & Co. envisioned as a rousing crowd-pleaser, centers on Rebel Wilson’s lazy house cat, Jennyanydots, and includes a Busby Berkeley routine featuring singing and dancing mice and cockroaches. Only the mice and cockroaches all have human faces. And Wilson’s cat character eats them like bonbons. Talk about nightmare fuel.
Another sequence showcases singer-dancer Jason Derulo as Rum Tum Tugger, doing a full-on tease and denial inside a milk bar where all the female cats lap cream out of giant saucers and purr at him. It’s fucking creepy as hell, not to mention wholly inappropriate for a PG movie.
Speaking of which, why is Derulo even in “Cats”? A better question might be, why is Taylor Swift in “Cats,” because her big entrance and song is a complete dud. All apologies to her Swifties, but based on this performance, Scooter Braun might not be Taylor’s biggest regret of 2019.
Despite not having seen the stage production of “Cats,” I at least knew the iconic song, “Memory,” which is a Broadway classic. So, it makes sense that Hudson would play Grizabella, the cat who sings it. What doesn’t make sense is the decision to chop the song into snippets, save for a third act crescendo, completely diminishing its emotional impact and effectively neutering Hudson’s incomparable voice.
I actually chose to review “Cats,” and I genuinely hoped that it might be an unexpected, subversive surprise.
What I didn’t anticipate was how offensive the film is. People were pissed after the critic’s screening, and I can only imagine that is because they love the stage production. Or their pets.
I was pissed too, but only because of the near two hours of life I lost while sitting in a dark theater watching actors I respect look completely flummoxed as to what the hell they were supposed to be doing.
If only movie studios weren’t so paranoid about piracy, with guards stationed throughout the theater, ready to pounce on anyone who dare check their cell phone, I otherwise might have whipped mine out and placed a call to Lap of Love.
If ever a movie needed to be put down and out of its misery, it’s “Cats.”
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
