About That "Cats" Movie

Oh boy. This one's a doozy.

I was well aware of the film's flaws going in, having followed the coverage of the disastrous CGI production troubles, the unprecedented graphics patch released by Universal, and the critical community having a field day writing shellshocked reviews. However, I grew up with the "Cats" musical and still unironically enjoy it. I even have a copy of the version they filmed for PBS back in 1998 somewhere. I figured that if anyone was going to get any enjoyment out of Tom Hooper's "Cats," it would be me.

And I was more or less right. I did enjoy certain parts of "Cats," specifically the performances of Jennifer Hudson and Ian McKellan, some of the dance choreography, and the elaborate production design. But good grief, the fundamental visual conception of the cat characters is so wrongheaded, and so off-putting that I couldn't believe the film was actually released in this state. If you've seen the trailers you already know the problem - instead of performers in makeup and costumes, the filmmakers opted to use CGI to turn actors like Judi Dench and Idris Elba into "The Island of Dr. Moreau" style half-cat, half-human hybrids. The effect varies from cat to cat, but too often you've got a performer who looks practically naked, with human anatomy but no genitalia, furry hands, human feet, twitchy cat ears on a human head, and a tail that is constantly moving in unnatural ways. I was able to focus on other aspects of the film and appreciate them, but the sense of profound wrongness never really went away.

As an adaptation of the stage musical, "Cats" doesn't make many major changes. I was surprised that the songs were left unaltered, even with their increasingly obscure T.S. Eliot lyrics. Victoria (Francesca Hayward), a newly abandoned kitten, is rewritten to be our POV character, who is brought to the yearly Jellicle Ball by the other cats, and befriends the outcast Grizabella (Hudson). The villain Macavity (Elba) is made more active, going around and kidnapping the other candidates vying for a chance to ascend to the cat heaven of the Heavyside Layer. There's still almost no spoken dialogue, but concessions are made for much needed exposition and some laugh lines for comic characters like Jennyanydots (Wilson) and Bustopher Jones (James Corden). The only new song, the tinny "Beautiful Ghosts," is given to Victoria for a bonding moment with Grizabella.

Otherwise, it's one song and character spotlight after another, featuring constant dancing, clowning, and cavorting. Some are charming, like the "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser" number, which relies on colorful, oversized sets and props. And some are tedious or downright nightmarish, like Jennyanydots' segment full of dancing mice and roaches with human faces. Pretty much any time Tom Hooper and company try to use CGI to upgrade the visuals, we end up with eldritch horrors. To their credit, the cast is a good mix of film and music stars and professional dance and theater performers. There are some longer group dance sequences toward the middle of the film that are more in line with the spectacle of the theater production, and give you a sense of what was appealing about "Cats" in the first place. Taylor Swift shows up to sing and vamp a bit, to good effect.

And then the head of Idris Elba appears on a bipedal chocolate pit-bull, and I just about curled up and died. There is no defending the movie, even if it's clear that a lot of talented people put a lot of time and effort into this. I haven't even gotten to the unnecessarily claustrophobic cinematography, the schizophrenic editing, the rough handling of the music, or the final number that is just Judi Dench singing the awful "The Ad-Dressing of Cats" directly into the camera.

I'm left wondering if "Cats" qualifies as an animated film, and if we can use this as an exemplar of the worst case scenario whenever anyone talks about making stylized characters more "realistic." See also the original design of "Sonic the Hedgehog." In a funny way, I'm impressed with the amount of ambition and go-for-broke daring that it took for the filmmakers to commit to this, uh, vision. You don't end up with a disaster on this scale by playing it safe.

It's no wonder "Cats" is quickly becoming a cult film. And dammit, now I kinda want to see Tom Hooper's "Starlight Express." Talk about another potential trainwreck...
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