Cats (2019): You don't need to see it

I love musical theater, from the most iconic shows like Wicked, to the obscure ones like Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

So, of course, when I heard they were making a film adaption of Cats I was initially excited… until I saw the trailer and well... I was less excited, and by less excited I mean I wasn’t planning on even seeing the film in the cinema. I thought I’d wait until it appeared on Sky movies in a few months and that would be that, and then the film actually came out (and apparently it was still being edited the day before the premiere and if you wondered, yes you can tell).

The internet suddenly became over saturated with memes and reviews and negative opinions and so as a joke, my friend and I decided we were going to see it.

So we got our student IDs and headed to the local cineworld, and we purchased the tickets with our student discounts because there was no way we were paying full price for what was sure to be a disaster. We even tried to find a Meerkat Movie code, so we’d only have to buy one ticket, but we had no luck.

Looking back now I wish that yesterday when we saw Jojo Rabbit that we’d not used my code, because I'd rather give Taika Waititi my money than Tom Hooper at this point.

So the movie starts and...boy was it bad.

First off, if you are unfamiliar with the stage version of Cats you will come out of the film not knowing what happened in the entire 2 hours that you sat in the dark watching it. My friend who knew nothing about Cats, sat there confused the whole time because in all honesty isn’t really a plot to the original musical, so why would there be one in the film adaptation?

The source material aside, there are some other elements of this film which are so off-putting, that it ruins the any potential this film has of success.

The ratio and proportions of the background set to the ‘cats’ was completely wrong to me. The cats looked too small against the human sized objects and it was distracting to look at.

The thing is though, if the cats were real life cats and not CGI monstrosities the ratio wouldn’t be off, but the weird humanoid creatures that this film tries to pass off as animals, just do not feel like they belong in this world. This makes the film hard for me to watch. Every time someone sat is sat on a chair, the chair would look way too big and in that scene it would be all I could notice.

While we’re here, let’s address the big elephant in the room. The awful CGI.

The faces of the characters looked like they had been badly superimposed in photoshop by someone who had never touched photoshop in their life and sometimes the faces seemed to move weirdly on the head like they were key framed incorrectly.

I’m not sure if it was intentional but no one bothered to CGI the feet or hands of the cats. So, you have people who look like they have fur, and then they just have human hands and feet and I literally could not stop staring at them in

scene.

Here’s the thing, I don’t think I would mind as much if there was more consistency in the way it all looked but, some cats wear shoes (which I think we can all agree is weird and disturbing), and some cats *cough* Judi Dench *cough* are wearing personal Items of jewellery. So here I am staring at the human hands of a cat who’s wearing a wedding ring on their left finger… Could she not have taken that off before filming? Or was she expecting them to CGI her hands?

I feel like we need to talk about the mice a little bit but the real horror was the cockroaches, there was no effort into even trying to blend the faces to the body, like they attempted with the cats, and it looked like something I would do in my editing class for my film degree. Amateur at best.

The CGI was so distracting that it really ruined a huge part of the film for me. Cats has such beautiful Choreography but the weird cat tails and the feet and the hands stole the show and I could barely concentrate on the beautiful Ballet.

It might surprise you from what I’ve said so far but I did enjoy some of the film, so maybe before I rip it apart some more we can talk about the good.

Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of Memory was absolutely beautiful, initially I was worried considering that it’s one of my favourite songs from this musical and one of my favourites from any musical, but I was almost crying at how wonderful it was (However no one could ever beat the way Barbra Streisand sings it, just saying).

The other stand out performance for me was from Taylor Swift in her version of Macavity. It’s probably because I love Taylor Swift but the energy and feeling she put into that song was spot on and I could listen to her sing it on repeat.

Mr Mistoffolees was another stand out song, however I’m not a fan of how it was performed compared the original show version that being said the film version is stuck in my head and it really was a stand out moment in the film.

I guess my ability to say positive things about this film has run out but, while we’re on the subject of Mr Mistoffolees it’s interesting to me (but not surprising) that the film choose to make him the love interest of Victoria (which is a dumb name for a cat by the way, if you have a cat named Victoria, what are you even doing), considering it is widely acknowledged that Mr Mistoffolees is gay, the stage musical is full of gay coding for this character and the film does everything to hide that. It’s disappointing to say the least, no one is saying that the cat needs to be outwardly and openly gay but at least give some kind of reference and respect to the source material.

I promise that I’m almost finished complaining about this film, but I have a few points left to make, and then we can all move on and forget that I took a break from writing an essay for University to not only go watch this film, but also to write this review.

Second to last point, I think it’s time we stop casting James Corden in movies. He was okay in Into The Woods but his singing voice is awful and if I’m honest, for a famous comedian he really isn’t that funny.

He works well in British TV. Small productions like Gavin and Stacy where no one is particularly a good actor but that's why it works. When you put him in a film with seasoned actors like Judi Dench and Idris Elba you start to see how mediocre he actually is.

The whole of his song, Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town, is supposed to be comedic and guess what? Not a single one of the 7 people in the cinema watching it laughed, it fell completely flat. It was cringey at best.

And so we make it to the last point: Why can barely anyone cast in this musical sing?

Every song sounded off-key, Rebel Wilson is a terrible singer and even Jason Derulo’s voice sounded awful. Other than the few I already mentioned in addition to Francesca Hayward, barely anyone in this film sounded good.

It’s a musical so maybe you should hire people who can actually sing, in a film where there’s barely any dialogue because most of it is singing.

So, what could they have done better with this film?

The main answer is to not make it CGI, I’m a big believer in the idea that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

I would much rather the actors have been in the costumes like the ones from the stage production, I really don’t think anyone would have minded considering that’s how it is in the source material. That way you wouldn’t be distracted by hands and feet because the film wouldn’t be trying to make you believe that the humans were actually cats.

And hey, Hollywood if you’re reading:

Please make films of musicals that people have been asking for.

We wanted Wicked, we didn’t want Cats.