"Cats" review

I'm speechless. Just speechless.





Adapting the long running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about a group of quirky alley cats gathering for a ritual to determine which of them will be chosen to have a second chance at life after death, "Cats" is destined, for better or worse, to be the single weirdest project to ever be granted a 9 figure budget from Hollywood.

The star studded cast pumped up by an infamously CGI heavy production is helmed by "Les Miserables" director Tom Hooper,  and while "Les Miserables" wasn't without its valid rationale for being polarizing, it's use of cinematic scope and production with unconventional editing and camera techniques made to mimic the ambiance of theatre at least made it an undeniably noble experiment in simulating the theatre production experience for those curious yet inexperience filmgoers.

Although I'm inclined to say that It's subsequent fair bit of financial and critical success had to have been a factor that landed him this very job, "Cats" in practice boils down to being a visually bonkers and nonsensical stream of actors projecting all over the place, barely stitched together by 2 hours of nonstop music and dance numbers permeated by sexual over and undertones from start to finish that feel like they would be more impressive to watch live in person than on screen.

There's no way to sugar coat that as a piece of cinematic narrative fiction, "Cats" is a full blown, befuddling, top to bottom, megaton disaster of a movie almost from start to finish.

Setting aside the widely vocalized criticism of its technical and aesthetic choices, easily justified by the fact that any theatre geek will tell you that of course a "Cats" movie looks like weirdly flamboyant and slightly off putting furry bait because it aesthetically is flamboyantly weird and slightly off putting furry bait, It's astonishing how far into being flat out production gibberish the film becomes, which probably shouldn’t be as shocking as it is, considering the play being adapted.

The source material in question is a highly interpretive, spectacle driven, ensemble musical with no designated leads or actual dialogue, with almost 3 quarters of the soundtrack being character-centric introductions commenting on the personality quirks of cat breeds and their psychology based on a book of non-narrative light poetry by T. S. Eliot.

It barely functions as narrative because no version of it has ever needed to exist with actual plot in mind.

That's not to say that you can't carve a strong story out of "Cats" but it would take an active effort and a willingness to reinterpret the material to do so. Every once in a while, in the film's more tender and intimate moments, all of the acting talent gets to flex their chops but the rhythm has to ultimately ramp right back up.

Ian Mckellen gets a sweet little melancholic number about remembering theatrical glory days gone past while Laurie Davidson and Francesca Hayward develop a sweet understated bond between number communicated almost exclusively through body language but these bits of subtlety all play out in isolation from the movie's stillborn narrative.

Taking the biggest hits from this are Idris Elba's menacing antagonist McCavity, who's design loses all sense of menace when he's forced to abandon the shadows to take the spotlight for the second most awkwardly sexual music number of the movie, and Jennifer Hudson's washed up and regretful Grizabella, who commands the screen when she's allowed to embody her role but has to be shunted to less focus in order for the film to chew through the workload it bit way too much off of.

As a movie, the results are alienating and mind boggling at worst and perversely fascinating at best.

Where I'm ultimately split on "Cats" however, is as somebody with an unhealthy obsession with experimenting with storytelling mechanics as well as somebody who's a sucker for theatre ambiance and musicals, "Cats" included.

Always messy but never boring, the film consistently elicits a reaction out of you whether it's the one you want or not but taken once more as a stage show that just happens to have the resources of film lens and production value at its disposal, it's not that bad of a ride.

At the very least, it's a fascinating one, watching actors of film and television figuring out how to work in a medium not their forte yet in their comfort zone and willing to put themselves out there in weird ways.

I don't even want to label this type of enjoyment as "so bad it's good" so much as "alternative."

Hooper directs every scene with a level of insane confidence that demands your attention even if you're likely to lose track of what's going on if you try to watch it as a traditional narrative and while I can't say that the dedication to breaking every common sense rule of film adaptation has made for a good film in any sense of the word, I can say that it's just weird enough that I have a genuine love for its existence built solely for its willingness to be this gonzo, on this scope, with this level of acting talent, on a budget of over $100 million.

This is the hardest review I've had to write in years.  I could get several articles out of deconstructing everything that doesn't work about this movie and just as many on why none of them matter, which makes it really hard to evaluate on any traditional metric of quality or discern who to recommend it to.

"Cats" is the type of high profile disaster that will be in film discourse for years to come.

For its destined cult following however, of which I am firmly a part of, existing in the crossroads between theatre buffs finding enjoyment in a new telling of a fluffy but classic show and the critical analyst that needs to know what a day of "cat school" with Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Ian Mckellen, and Judy Dench looks like, I salute it as one of the most unforgettable films I have seen this decade.

4 Questionable Jellicle Choices out of 10