I have seen a lot of bad movies in my time. The Room is a catastrophic disaster. Birdemic: Shock and Terror is nearly unwatchable. I am now tasked with an almost impossible challenge: to write about all the stuff wrong with this movie. Obviously, this film was bad, atrocious even; but describing HOW it’s bad is an immense undertaking. I’ll start by saying that I’m under the strong assumption that this director 1) has never seen the Broadway play of Cats (or any other iteration) and 2) has likely never seen an actual cat. I’m going to break this up into sections: story structure, music, acting, visual effects, and random observations.
A dramatic premise is a pithy statement that summarises what a story is about. For example, “Othello” can be condensed to “jealousy destroys the object of its affection, and itself.” All scenes in a story/film/novel/etcetera should point to this premise. Even stories that fuck up, have superfluous scenes, or are just poorly made overall have some semblance of a dramatic premise – even if unintentional. NEVER, in my entire film viewing experience, have I ever found a movie that was completely devoid of a dramatic premise…and yet, here we are.
There is no story. There is no character arc. There is no plot. There is no point. If you don’t know the original story (which I don’t fucking remember), you’re hopelessly, recklessly lost. Characters show up, unannounced, and leave without any clue of who they are or why they’re there. Jennifer Hudson shows up as a crack-addicted bag lady, er, bag…cat…and starts bawling her sad music with enough snot in her nose to make another “Blair Witch” sequel. Then she slinks off and someone asks, “Who was that?” Read my goddamned mind, you weird fucking animals.
The whole movie is just song after song with zero context. The entire film was a series of inside jokes to an audience of outsiders.
The main actress playing “Victoria” has only one expression, and she stands like she’s going to piss herself. Like every other character, she was worthless to the “story.” Dame Judi Dench was the stuff of nightmares. She looked like Lon Chaney auditioning to play Garfield in a Sheba cat food advert. She and others wore attire that looked like skinned cats. Maybe that was the point: that she wore the corpses of her enemies, à la Buffalo Bill.
I can’t get over the Jennifer Hudson character! She was the most accurate depiction of a cat, in that her songs were just the painful yowling of felines suffering urinary tract infections. All of the other musicians were terrible and I hate them for being in it. Taylor Swift didn’t know what the fuck she was doing, yet she seemed the most invested. And poor Ian McKellan! He had one number that was an overt reference to him having a mental breakdown from being in this shit after such an illustrious career.
The visual effects made less sense than the movie and were deeply unnerving. While I get why you want to feature the beauty of ballet, it doesn’t work in this new medium. And why are you sexualising my goddamned cat, you cocksuckers?! I don’t need to see Idris Elba’s eunuch body; I genuinely feel entitled for remunerations from trauma. (It was funny how he never looked at any of the actors. His eyes, which constantly changed colour, were always off-axis – focussing on something else.) But if you ever show me Rebel Wilson spread-eagle, I will fucking hunt you down….
Why are some parts of the people anthropomorphised, yet others have cat features are intact – albeit not accurately? Guys, have you ever watched a cat or seen their ears? They don’t articulate like that. You made me not want a pet anymore, you donkey-punch assholes.
No one laughed or responded to the visual “gags,” all of which defied the very laws of physics. Objects would unnaturally swell or shrink to fit the gaping maw of mouths stretched across the screen. The editing lingered to the point of awkwardness, and I think the continuity person must’ve died midway through production. In addition to eyes changing, costumes fluctuated wildly. Sometimes there would be whiskers, sometimes not. And the set pieces were totally inconsistent. I feel like Marc Caro would have designed this set to give audiences panic attacks; the effects reminded me of a furry version of “City of Lost Children.” Surprisingly less rapey, though.
Also, like Jeunet’s haunting masterpiece, the music was unsettling. At times, it sounded like the boss fight music to an 8-bit horror game – an ersatz accordion screeching out repetitive notes that would make Philip Glass’s dick harder than a calcified stalagmite. Most of the time, however, it was just off-key singing backed by an Ed Van Fleet CD played at double-speed. (I’m thinking of “The Fire of Joy“…give it a listen.)
The dancing was mostly awful. The only redeeming routine was the tap-dance sequence, but it’s hardly redeemable since it resembled a bad acid trip while your uncle pressures you to look at the rash on his scrotum because his Medicaid ran out and he can’t afford a doctor. Uncle Mike, please, I dropped out of med-school!
The whole project feels like Tim Hooper’s nightmare experience of being a child forced to watch this play with his drunk dad – who later took him to a prostitute to lose his virginity by a woman dressed like the horrors he witnessed in the play. I’m just guessing, though…but like, a STRONG guess.
There was a scene in which Victoria meets up with some weird, swinger-cats, and a dog is trying to get in. But you never see the dog. I’m convinced that this wasn’t due to budget constraints; but more that if you saw the dog, you’d see the face of the Devil himself.
I feel like I should talk about the patrons who were there, but I won’t. I just can’t bring myself to drag them through the mud, but it definitely added a poignant dimension to the experience.
During the last half-hour, I started laughing uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop, and it was contagious – spreading to a group nearby. The movie felt like it was three hours long, but it was really the 11.5% beer I snuck in wearing off. I would not recommend this movie to anyone. Or to any cat. I wish I had put my money toward Ayahuasca, because it would have fucked me up less than this film.
I want to write more, as I took pages of notes that were distilled into this post. I think it’s enough. I’m sorry you’ve had to suffer by proxy; be thankful you didn’t undergo the hell that was my random Wednesday.