I can thank Barney for my introduction to Cats. Of all places to put a direct-to-video trailer of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, a VHS copy of Barney's Great Adventure is an odd choice. There was also an episode of Reading Rainbow that showed a behind-the-scenes look at Cats with Broadway actress Loni Ackerson preparing for her role. Since then, I've heard snippets now and then on how it's considered a Broadway masterpiece and for its iconic song "Memory." It wasn't until I saw an episode of the animated adult comedy The Critic, that there was some general level of disdain towards the show.
That's as much of as I know about Cats, heck I don't even know the plot which I can only guess its about singing and dancing cats, I guess the idea of people dressed as cats, acting like cats with the purring, hissing, cuddling, walking on all fours, in addition to the singing and dancing, is what made people realized how far-fetched it looked.
Concept art of the cancelled Cats movie
that would have been hand-drawn animated.
There were plans to turn Cats into a an animated movie back in the nineties from Amblimation, Steven Spielberg's animation studio that made An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story and Balto. It would have been the company's fourth movie after Balto, but due to Balto's disappointing numbers at the box-office despite good reviews (and premiering the same week as Toy Story), Amblimation was shut down and the Cats movie was cancelled. It's a shame that this version never came to be, because this new iteration could have benefited by being traditionally animated.
But before we get to that, what is Cats about? We follow this one cat Victoria (newcomer Francesca Hayward), abandoned on the streets until she meets the Jellicle cats who introduce themselves through dance and song number. It's rinse and repeat as we immediately meet another cat who introduce themselves with a musical number, until we get to the Jellicle ball, where a Jellicle cat can perfrom for the head Jellicle Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), to go to Cat heaven and be reborn into to better cat or something like that. All the while, the mischievous Macavity (Idris Elba) prowls around causing trouble for the challengers with his teleportation powers so he can win the contest. Why he never uses these powers in the climax, I have no clue.
As soon as the trailer first premiered for this live-action CGI musical, everyone made it clear that the designs looked more freaky than appealing. Love or hate the original stage show, you have to admire the costume and make-up work that went into into making the actors look very feline in appearance. Digitally adding fuzzing fur to the entire body minus a fraction of the face and adding a tail, only resulted in a bizarre and sometimes unsettling design. It doesn't help that ninety percent of the cast are cat naked.
Idris Elba as Macavity
My eyes stayed glued onscreen for the first hour just fascinated on this gorgeous mess of a movie. Other parts were just boring or bizarre that I lost interest that my eyelids were starting to droop. Were the filmmakers so confident that this would work, or did they realize they had a dud and just ran with whatever they had at their disposal? Did I mention the singing mice and cockroaches?
Taylor Swift in her one and only dance number.
I don't fault the actors who are giving it their all with the songs and dance numbers, but it's hard to be invested with their awkward appearance and the way the musical numbers are presented. Taylor Swift fans, don't get your hopes up, she's appears in only in one song performance and is gone with no explanation.
Jennifer Hudson(Left), Laurie Davidson(top),
and Ian McKellen(bottom).
The less creepy-looking characters were the ones who wore clothes like Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson), Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson), and Skimbleshanks (Steven McRae) and to an extent Gus (Ian McKellen) and Bustopher Jones (James Corden), who have a more appropriate anthropomorphic design like in fantasy or fairy tale setting. Every time they appeared onscreen the movie became tolerable and delivered the most memorable songs of the movie. There is also an original song made for the film sung by Hayward, that in those brief moments I was able to look past her feline presence. Seeing Les Twins and recognizing their dance moves was another delight to see even as cats.
James Corden dancing with the Jerricles.
Is there so much of this movie to tear apart? Yes. A sure winner for Worst Picture at the Razzies. Yes. And yet, I didn't leave the theater hating the movie or think it was a waste of time. Despite its perplexing presentation you can't help but be entranced at the same time. Unlike other bad movies like The Cat in the Hat or Fifty Shades,where I would rather forget, Cats is surprisingly enjoyable in a twisted sort of way that must be seen to be believed.
If anything Cats, achieves of being memorable, and will have people talking about in both the good and bad.
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