Cats, Is, Uh, Well...

What the hell can I even say about this? Other reviews, both professional and amateur, have pretty much run the comedy well dry talking about this movie. If you like Cats the musical, I guess you’ll probably like this movie adaptation? I’ve seen the show, and now I’ve seen the movie, and I still don’t really understand it. Do you just have to love cats to enjoy this? Is this an experience exclusively for cat people?

I’m just going to be honest. It kinda felt like I was drugged when I was watching this thing. I couldn’t look away from it, yet I remember very little of it. And it’s an hour and fifty minutes long. I had to leave to go to the bathroom at one point, and I was in a daze. Under the harsh lights of the AMC restroom, I looked like a heroin addict in the dirty mirror. There was no soap. I should’ve called it right then and there; thrown in the towel and gone to watch something wholesome like A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I could’ve even comforted myself at the Cinnabon right across from the theater entrance (USA! USA! USA!). But no. I went back in. Pandora’s box had been opened in that theater. I had already seen too much. The ritual was not yet complete. 

So Cats is a movie based on a Broadway musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which in turn is based on a poetry collection by T.S. Eliot called Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. It’s about a tribe of cats called the Jellicles. A new cat, Victoria (Francesca Hayward), arrives and wants to become a Jellicle herself. What the hell is a Jellicle? What is the criteria for becoming one? I have no idea. Maybe it’s explained in the opening song, but the music (and what I was looking at) was so anxiety-inducing that it was hard to focus on what the words were. Tonight is the Jellicles’ yearly ceremony, which decides who will ascend to the Heavyside Layer, basically the cats’ version of heaven. 

Almost the entirety of both the stage musical and this movie is spent introducing a vast array of different cats, all of whom are competing to be chosen. Because of this, you aren’t granted the luxury of having any sort of idea where this movie is going, or how long it’s been going on for. There’s no indication of when exactly the Jellicle Ball will begin, you just sit there and watch more and more cats arrive and sing songs about who they are. Oh god, it’s all coming back to me. Why?! Free me from this!

Look. The stage musical is a fun showcase for makeup, dancing, and singing. The music is mostly forgettable, probably due to its nonsense lyrics, but sometimes it’s genuinely beautiful. A Cats movie could have had all of these things too. But, for whatever completely insane reason, director Tom Hooper chose the worst route possible: CG. Instead of instantly Oscar-worthy costumes and makeup, what your eyes are forced to endure is unintentional (maybe not?) nightmare-fuel. The technology is incredible, no doubt about that, but it’s still not completely there yet for something like this. Human faces, human hands, but CG cat ears and fur and tails and God knows what else; it all just hurts the processing of information from your eyes to your brain and back. 

Whatever choreography and dancing might be there to enjoy is ruined due to how unnatural every movement looks. It’s hard to admire these actors trying their best when your brain is constantly sending alarms that SOMETHING IS WRONG. Terror grips you very early on. Robbie Fairchild’s Munkustrap simply refuses to not blankly stare at both Victoria and the camera as if he’s going to murder everyone here, slowly and sensually, and enjoy every minute of it. Mice and cockroaches dance and march and have human faces too, but these are more crudely pasted onto their CG bodies than the cats, and the result is something like the old Jib-Jab internet videos or Jay Jay the Jet Plane.

At one point, a cat named Skimbleshanks (Steven McRae) pops in and goes hog-wild. He tap dances like a maniac on tables, on railway tracks, on the floor, in your dreams. His energy is infectious, and the movie seems like it’s actually having some good fun. I am impressed by the ferocity of the tap dance, a skill that I never understood in the slightest bit when I danced in high school. Skimbleshanks eventually reaches his peak, the music is insane, and the tabby cat spins and spins and until he’s flying up into the air. The other cats are screaming with delight. Then, Skimbleshanks, spinning at an immeasurable velocity, suddenly explodes into a puff of smoke. Taylor Swift arrives, with a terrible attempt at an English accent, introducing Macavity, which is a naked Idris Elba, who might be the devil? I cackled in the theater. I believe I had finally broken. Yet the movie raged on, and I along with it.

Just when you think it’s safe - the Jellicle has been chosen to go and die, I guess - the music swells and the night turns into day. You’ve done it: you’ve made it through Cats. It’s done. But then the movie reveals its most horrifying scene was still yet to come. Judi Dench’s Old Deuteronomy looks directly at you. In you. Past you. She sees all, and she’s seen your soul. Then all the cats look at you. They sing a final song, directly to the audience, as if to remind them that no matter where they go, no matter who they tell, no matter how long it’s been, they won’t forget this. Part of your eternal self forever resides with them now.

Cats might’ve done alright if it weren’t for the misguided attempt at using CG. It’s an extremely niche thing, but it has its fans, and those fans would’ve shown up for a movie adaptation that looked like a musical they love. It could’ve made a decent amount of money. But instead we got this, a $100 million production that opened the same weekend as Star Wars. Who...who is responsible for this? The film is a massive box office bomb, millions of dollars will be lost, it’s withdrawn from Oscar campaigning, and it’s become a popular target of ridicule by the masses. There was no need for this. Cats is strange, and I can’t say that I enjoy it much at all, but the desire to make an already kind of unsettling thing a thousand times more terrifying is a bizarre thing indeed. 

I need to take a walk now. Much to think about.