{"id":8185,"date":"2024-11-12T00:05:46","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8185"},"modified":"2024-11-12T00:05:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:05:46","slug":"cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/12\/cats\/","title":{"rendered":"Cats"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Cats <\/strong>(2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Musical-Fantasy-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some rude and suggestive humor)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Tom Hooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lee Hall and Tom Cooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Christopher Ross\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 20, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: James Corden, Laurie Davidson, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Francesca Hayward, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, Ray Winstone, Les Twins.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $27.2M (US)\/$74.6M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cats<\/strong>, the long-awaited adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber\u2019s smash Broadway musical, the fourth-longest running show (18 years!) in their history, made me want to scratch my eyes out. It\u2019s a real dog. I sat there the whole time with this in mind: \u201cI know I\u2019m supposed to be entertained by all this jazz, but somehow I\u2019m not.\u201d It should be fun, but it really isn\u2019t. It\u2019s actually CAT-astrophic.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For those who don\u2019t know, Cats <\/strong>was to the 80s what Hamilton is today. It was the hottest selling show on Broadway. You couldn\u2019t get tickets to this thing. It was only natural that somebody would eventually attempt a film adaptation. It languished in development hell for years. At one time, Steven Spielberg was going to do an animated version. Now it\u2019s finally been done and it\u2019s for the birds. I only hope that when they get around to doing a movie of Hamilton, they do a whole hell of a lot better than this clunky bore that in no way, shape or form helps an uninitiated person like me (I never saw the show) understand its appeal. It\u2019s one of the most unappealing movies I\u2019ve ever seen, visually and otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Tom Hooper (Les Miserables), Cats<\/strong> is a weaving together of whimsical cat poems from T.S. Eliot\u2019s 1939 collection Old Possum\u2019s Book of Practical Cats. A plot is all but non-existent. A tribe of cats called \u201cJellicles\u201d living in the dark alleys of London compete in a singing competition to determine who will be the next one to ascend to a place called \u201cThe Heaviside Layer\u201d where they will move onto the next of their nine lives. The winner is determined by the wise elder Jellicle \u201cOld Deuteronomy\u201d (Dench, Philomena). The main conflict is the villainous cat Macavity (Elba, Beasts of No Nation) who kidnaps potential Jellicle winners for reasons left unexplained.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That\u2019s really it as far as story goes. Cats<\/strong> is basically a bunch of scenes of actors in cat costumes singing and dancing. The main character is Victoria (Royal Ballet dancer Francesca Hayward), the newest member of the tribe, a white cat abandoned by her humans. The other cats show up to find out who she is. Then they sing a number about the importance of names or some such nonsense. That\u2019s when the movie lost me. It\u2019s hard to follow what\u2019s going on because the lyrics are incomprehensible. Then we meet other cats like Rebel Wilson\u2019s fat, lazy Jennyanydots who trains mice and cockroaches as a night job. Her number features human actors in mice and cockroach costumes. That\u2019s weird, but more than that, the character acts a lot like Rebel Wilson. I\u2019m pretty sure this differs from Webber\u2019s interpretation of Eliot\u2019s character.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cats<\/strong> fails on many levels, but none as bad as it does as a musical, its most fundamental level. Other than the show\u2019s signature song \u201cMemory\u201d, I\u2019m not familiar with its songbook. After seeing the movie, I still can\u2019t name any of the songs. I can\u2019t even remember a single melody. They\u2019re utterly forgettable. The only other one I recall (and vaguely at that) is the Taylor Swift song \u201cBeautiful Moon\u201d written specifically to qualify for a Best Original Song Oscar. Where Hooper really botches it is the choreography. It\u2019s edited in such a way that choreography is a moot point. In a musical, it should be enough for the director to point his camera at the actors and let them strut their stuff like they did in the days of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. There\u2019s so much cross-cutting and crazy angles in Cats <\/strong>that it denies the audience the simple pleasure of watching dancers dance. The only good thing here is the graceful way Hayward moves.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The one and only bright spot of Cats<\/strong> is Jennifer Hudson\u2019s rendition of \u201cMemory\u201d near the end. Like she did with \u201cAnd I Am Telling You I\u2019m Not Going\u201d in Dreamgirls, she really belts it out to great effect. For those few brief minutes, the movie comes to life. Compared to the other numbers, it\u2019s a show-stopper. For the record, she plays Grizabella, an outcast cat who used to run with Macavity. I\u2019ll give Hooper this; he did assemble an impressive cast that also includes Ian McKellen (Gandalf himself), late night host James Corden, R&B singer Jason Derulo and pop singer Taylor Swift. The problem is we don\u2019t get to know many of the characters outside their one number. They show up, sing and blend back in with the cat pack.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now let\u2019s talk about the tiger in the room. The rumor is apparently true. At the request of the director, a new print of Cats<\/strong> with \u201csome improved special effects\u201d is being shipped to theaters this weekend. I don\u2019t know what they could possibly do to make this debacle look any less ghastly. The \u201ccats\u201d, a combination of costumes, prosthetics and CGI, have an unsettling appearance. They could easily co-star in a kid\u2019s nightmare with the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. As for scale, it\u2019s all wrong too. The cast is digitally shrunk down against oversize sets resulting in a wonky-looking movie. When the look of a fantasy-based musical is NOT pleasing to the eye, something went really, REALLY wrong.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s possible that X-amount of years from now Cats<\/strong> will attain the cult status of great musical disasters like The Apple and Xanadu. Right now, it\u2019s just a very bad movie that would be more at home in a litter box than the local multiplex. Somebody should have left it in the bag.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cats (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Musical-Fantasy-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (some rude and suggestive humor)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Tom Hooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lee Hall and Tom Cooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Christopher Ross\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 20, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: James Corden, Laurie Davidson, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Francesca Hayward, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musical","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Cats-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8185"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8378,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8185\/revisions\/8378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}