Don't worry, you'll still be getting the annual top five, but consider this a Christmas treat: a bonus review. Since it's the opening weekend and thus still very much the hot topic, I was gonna talk about Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, then I remembered it's Star Wars, which historically has a fanbase best likened to a honey badger trapped in a washing machine, and not only that, I'm one of those freaks who still loves The Last Jedi, and so I decided it might be wiser to avoid getting my eyes gouged out at an eco-friendly thirty-degree heat and turn my sights on the other, more agreeably bad film opening this weekend, Cats. Because frankly, I couldn't think when else I was gonna get a chance to talk about it and I can't let this travesty go uncommented on.
Now as a disclaimer, I'm well aware of the stage musical that this is adapted from, and from what I've researched the stage version is just as problematic story-wise as the film is, so the film has been effectively shot in the knee before it even left the gate. But here's the thing: a big part of adaptation is changing a story so that it will work in a new medium. A loose, barely existent plot might work on stage, where the musical is, in reality, closer to a ballet than anything, but on screen where story is a lot more crucial, you need to add something more for it to work, especially if you're trying to make a mainstream crowd-pleaser for all the family to enjoy.
With all that in mind, Cats is a film almost entirely devoid of plot, protagonists, character development or motivations. The closest thing that resembles a story is that a gang of London cats called the Jellicles have an annual talent show, the winner of which ascends to 'the Heaviside layer'. On stage, this is supposed to mean being reborn as a Jellicle but the film doesn't clarify that very well to my memory, so the Jellicles are essentially the cat equivalents of either a sacrificial pagan cult or Born Again Christians.
In practice, a nearly silent protagonist cat named Victoria is dropped off in some back alley and the Jellicles gang up on her and basically just sing and dance at her for about an hour like she's some kind of talent scout, while she vacantly stares back at them, presumably waiting for an opportunity to run away. Most of the songs consist of her being introduced to random cats like Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo) and Bustopher Jones (James Corden) with no real suggestion of why we should care about any of them. And yes those are their real names. Wilson and Corden, in particular, are quite obnoxious, although this is probably just down to them as actors rather than their characters. It might just be me, but I've never really been particularly fond of Corden's comedy, there's a level of smugness to him where he thinks he's a lot funnier than he actually is and it makes him quite punchable. During his song, he gets a "wacky" fourth wall break moment which, to be honest, sounds more like Corden had some kind of breakdown mid-take and they just left it in, like he suddenly just realised he's in fucking Cats. In fact, his line at the end of this moment, delivered with a character breaking level of exasperation, ends with the sentence "you're all......cats!", spoken in such a way that it sounds like the word 'fucking' should be occupying the gap.
You know, that's probably a good a time as any to talk about the elephant in the room: the CGI. This film is somehow rated U, and yet the character design on the cats is child traumatisingly awful. Much has already been said about this when the trailer dropped, and supposedly improvements have been made since then, but I honestly don't know how any of this made it past inspection. For one thing, I don't know any human that would see an extended shot of Rebel Wilson as an anthropomorphic cat scratching away at her cat pussy, and say: "Yes, this is fine. No problems here. Children will love this." But hey, I guess if you're a degenerate, this film has you covered. In fact, that might as well be the tagline.
The character design is just flat out disturbing, in fact a lot of them remind me of Mike Myers in The Cat in the Hat, and trust me, no one wants to be reminded of The Cat in the Hat. The cats' appearance not only makes it hard to relate to them, but it's also just really distracting. They've made them anthropomorphic and yet rendered them with fur in a somewhat photorealistic way, but anthropomorphism doesn't really look very pleasing when it's live-action and certainly not when they still have human faces and hands, sticking them in this weird fur-lined uncanny valley that just triggers some primal discomfort. Genuinely, if they'd gone all the way and just given them cat faces too, I think the film would have been so much better for it, and people would probably not be slating the CG nearly as much as they have been.
There's also something almost sexual about the way they're designed, and while I'm sure it wasn't intentional, there's this kind of uncomfortable atmosphere where you just know someone somewhere is getting off to it. If the cats had more of a humans-in-a-costume vibe like in the stage show, it would probably be OK, but because they've tried to commit to the cat aspect, there's a lot of attention drawn to the fact that most of them while of human shape and proportion are not wearing clothes, and those that are do not have underwear. So now you're sat watching a film that's seems clearly aimed at kids, or at least families with relatively young children, with a load of essentially naked, although at least genital-less, humans slinking around, lapping up milk, nuzzling each other and just generally acting cat-like in a frankly fetishistic way. Luckily no-one goes uwu.
As far as I'm aware, the film is relatively faithful to the stage version, not that there's much plot to be faithful to, but there is one strange area where the film deviates. Idris Elba, who's clearly accepted the shit he's in and is just rolling with it and enjoying every second, plays Macavity, a villain cat who wants to win the talent show. Again, why this means so much to him is never explained, considering the only reward seemingly of becoming an Evanjellicle is official membership, which doesn't seem like something that would interest him. On stage, he occasionally shows up to abduct his competition, presumably by means of hessian sack or Fulton recovery system or another classic kidnap method. In the film, however, he just sorta vanishes them. He'll tap someone on the shoulder and POOF! Evaporated. Then they reappear on a barge in the middle of the Thames. It's a nitpicky detail I'll admit but it's just kinda baffling; call me cynical but I somehow don't buy that this is a world where magical teleportation exists, let alone a world where it's just shrugged off as something that happens.
It gets weirder though. Eventually, he disappears Old Deuteronomy (Dame Judi Dench, who definitely seems to have an air of 'I need to fire my agent' to her performance), leaving the Jellicles to wonder what to do next. "Maybe we can just magic her back", says Victoria, in one of the only lines she seems to have, and yes that's more or less a direct quote. And so cue Mister Mistoffelees' number, cause he's a magician, and despite him clearly not knowing how to magic Old Deuteronomy back, somehow he fuckin does it! Without any explanation outside of "iT's MaGiC", she's just back, problem solved and the "plot" continues. It's one of the most egregious deus ex machinas I've seen in ages, and the film barely even cares. Not to mention, we then see all the other kidnapees who've been chained on the barge all this time, and since I guess someone told them they need to wrap this trainwreck up, they just conveniently pull off their chains and escape with minimal effort. How did any of this get past quality assurance?!
Speaking of which, the editing is also pretty messy. There are reports that Hooper was still editing the film right up towards the deadline on Wednesday night, which first of all, I feel that. That was me editing my second-year uni film, knowing what a mess it was and desperately tweaking ANYTHING in an attempt to make it better. And second of all, it kinda shows. The moment that stuck in my mind was during Rum Tum Tugger's song, there's a shot of Rebel Wilson delivering a characteristically unfunny quip, and the shot awkwardly lingers on her for way too long, presumably waiting for the audience to recover from their paroxysms of laughter, but even accounting for that it's uncomfortably long. It feels like an editing error more than anything, you can actually see Wilson's character start to break a bit as she presumably waits for Hooper to call cut. In a broader sense, the film is just a bit of a drag. The lack of any real plot definitely doesn't help, but considering it's only about an hour and fifty minutes long, Cats feels about twice that. I genuinely fell asleep probably around the hour mark for about ten minutes, and when I woke up it honestly felt like I had missed nothing at all.
Cats is a bafflingly bad film, but in a way I do feel sorry for it. The idea of adapting the plot-less stage musical to screen in the first place is basically a massive handicap on the film's part, but the character design sealed its fate, and there's no amount of directorial magic that could have probably saved it. That being said, it's not like the film tries its absolute hardest to overcome its issues, and there were definitely a lot of dodgy choices made in the adaptation, casting and direction. I'd almost consider recommending it, not as a film, but as some kind of exhibition piece. Roll up, roll up one and all! Come and see the freak. Marvel at how James Corden gets smacked in the crotch and feels pain, despite visibly having no genitals!
You're right, you probably didn't want to think about James Corden's cat bollocks ever in your life, but this film made me think about them for multiple seconds and that is a crime that I will never forgive it for!
Cats - 2019 - Tom Hooper - USA
Score: 4
Recommendation: Low
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