Cats (2019)

Director: Tom Hooper

Screenplay: Lee Hall and Tom Hooper

Based on musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Cast: James Corden as Bustopher Jones; Judi Dench as Old Deuteronomy; Jason Derulo as Rum Tum Tugger; Idris Elba as Macavity the Mystery Cat; Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella the Glamour Cat; Ian McKellen as Gus "Asparagus" the Theatre Cat; Taylor Swift as Bombalurina; Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots the Gumbie Cat; Francesca Hayward as Victoria the White Cat; Laurie Davidson as Mr. Mistoffelees; Robbie Fairchild as Munkustrap; Mette Towley as Cassandra; Steven McRae as Skimbleshanks

Normally, I don't compose reviews of films this mainstream but this is a rare case. Whilst some of my readership might by surprised by this, if you look at the history of the film and its content, if it had been a musical adaptation of The Island of Doctor Moreau, it might've worked. That this was unintentional is just scratching the surface of all the justification I need to cover this misguided folly.

What we got is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation that has no plot, and thus needs to be treated as a vignette show, barring the fact what little semblance of a plot there is happens to be a bizarre one, of a talent show where the winner each year gets to die and be reincarnated as a new cat. The result is done with so many ill-advised creative decisions from the director of The King's Speech (2010) that it makes sense to cover Cats.

Tom Hooper, a British-Australian director who originates from the BBC and jumped to cinema fully from 2009, really came to popularity suddenly when The King's Speech won the 2010 Best Picture Oscar. One, his career before isn't to be looked down upon, as he directed the acclaimed 2008 American miniseries John Adams with Paul Giamatti, but The King's Speech success helped him considerable. It was a film, in the context of Oscar winners, is a good film able to overcome its generic structure, about the future King George VI overcoming his stammer, notably because of its aesthetic, a surprisingly dank and oppressive one that fit the late 1930s in Britain just as we were about to go to World War II against Nazi Germany.

Unfortunately, this aesthetic style alongside other details became a huge hindrance to Cats, which is ironic as Hooper also adapted the musical Les Misérables (2012), a film no one complained about even if he cast actors like Russell Crowe who couldn't sing. Cats immediately gets off to a start that warns you that this has gone amiss as a creative production, as a synthesizer starts making noises sounds more for a sci-fi horror tale, a dank timeless London¹ introduced drenched in artificial coloured lights and the sight of dancers turned into CGI hybrids of cat humanoids. In this world, without any context, immediately they're singing about being "jellicle cats" without it explaining what the hell "jellicle" actually means.

Cats is one of the most successful musicals in existence, based on a series of poems by T.S. Elliot about cats compiled into a book, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939). In terms of just this film without any other context, it has a very strange plot closer to The Holy Mountain (1973) than wholesome musical, that every year these "jellicle" cat humanoids have a talent competition where Judi Dench chooses who gets to die as the main prize, ascent to cat heaven (in a hot air balloon) and be reincarnated. Beyond this, most of the film is meant to make Victoria (played by ballet dancer Francesca Hayward in her feature film debut) being the protagonist, which doesn't work as the structure shuffles between various one-off cameos and set pieces. Idris Elba playing Macavity, a cat dressed like a crime film detective who can teleport in puff of smokes, is the main antagonist who wants the prize himself. It's aside from this just a song and a dance numbers spectacle, combining actual dancers and singers (including Taylor Swift in a cameo) with actors not known for singing like Dench or Ian McKellen.

The issue with Cats is that, willingly paying for a ticket in hope for a car crash, there's a lot that's bizarre but also a lot that is just generic. Having seen types of bad cinema that few would willingly watch, my attitude to this concept is more skewered, to the point that a film so technically incompetent can become a good film for me as accidental surrealism. The issue with Cats is that it's bad, but in a negative way that it's a large Universal production that, for moments of gleeful perversity, is pretty average but with the horror that it's tonally ill advised and poorly creative. This type of high budget production that shouldn't be this bad, but neither can I say its compelling either.

For starters, when the original show had costumes for its cast, Hooper and the production decided to turn the cast into photo realistic humanoid cats right down to pronounced furry breasts and buttocks, which is provocative especially for a film suitable for children and is such a wrongheaded concept. Again, the Dr. Moreau references seem apt, as is the sense the tone is jarring. A dank, pink hued lit slum is where to film exists within, which (from dice to bins) varies in size compared to the cast in extremes, all surrounding with what is effectively a cult of peculiar feline creatures, the premise for a cult horror film, not a musical. Rebel Wilson, who is a larger figured actress stuck playing to it as a joke, immediately sets up the misguided nature of the show in one of the first song numbers, one which has already developed infamy. Scratching herself erotically; humanoid cockroaches played by actors being eaten by humanoid cats; humanoid mice played by children, which is disturbing as they're meant to be food too. This film is never as perplexing as this sequence, but the film instead is saturated in this grotesque CGI hybrid and badly put together musical numbers to compensate.

Hooper cannot film a musical. The dancing, which is impressive at points, is edited to shreds and with many close-ups that obfuscate the scenes. I see the point Tom Hooper wants to make with close-ups in the singing - to wring emotion out of individuals like Jennifer Hudson - only for it to lead to Hudson uncomfortably stuck crying and depressed as a cat who's vaguely a vagrant (maybe a sex worker) with ill defined lyrics and a grotty coat over her fur, rather than an actual character to sympathise with. It's not good for a musical, where you should allow for space and see the preciseness of the dancing, and it's not good when all your emotional tension feels laboured. Like martial arts films, you cannot get away with this type of production where you manipulate the images to hide the cast's talents onscreen unless you are good enough to pull it off.

Cast wise, many talented figures are left out to dry like Hudson. I'll be controversial and say Ian McKellen is the best part, even though he cannot sing in the slightest and is seen licking milk from a giant saucer, mainly because he's playing a cat from a theatre background, which would a great film premise in itself, a veteran of Shakespeare and the stage playing a sad isolated old actor who still has the energy when allowed to perform. Idris Elba is also good as a peculiar musical cat noir film baddy, only undercut by the horror of his CGI form when without the coat on, making him look nude; now Elba is an incredibly handsome man, but as a DNA spliced man cat, his physical beauty and charisma sadly cannot improve a horror CGI experiment. Dench looks confused; Australian ballet dancer Steven McRae, playing a tap dancing railway cat, does stands out if marginalised; comedian James Corden embarrasses himself by also playing to his weight as a fat food obsessed cat; and, likely to upset some people, I didn't think Taylor Swift particularly stands out musically let alone as an actor, a pretty generic song from someone who has no side in the controversies around her, just that I also happen to be someone who equates "great singer" to someone like Bjork and the bar is extremely high, especially when Hudson is great and in the same film.

The result does eventually drag as the real issue with the film that it eventually becomes a lazy animal that is not compelling bad or good. Even the songs, for another controversial choice, don't stand out with some poor musical choices (the synth, flat bass funk lines); The lyrics are very witty at times when you can discern more than the word "jellical" repeated over and over again, but there's a conventionality which I really don't find memorable for myself, songs unfortunately put together with not enough force to them, including the new song composed between Andrew Lloyd Webber and Taylor Swift.

Cats was not a box office success. Its trailer released in the summer of 2019 was mocked, and the original theatrical release had unfinished CGI that had to be replaced with a new theatrical release, which would've been humiliating. Premiered in December 2019, it was already doomed further by being released at the same time as a new Star Wars film and already within the timeframe of that theatrical release, at least one sing-a-long screening was set up probably to cash in on a manufactured cult status. Everything was dictated by poor technical decisions and the film being gauche to the point of tedious for me, all in mind some might defend the film regardless. Certainly, it's an artistic folly I cannot agree should be admired for how bad it is, as it's still pretty bland for ever ill advised and dumbfounding choice onscreen.

Abstract Spectrum: Kitsch/Grotesque/Melodramatic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) In the forties or fifties? Probably thirties as there's a film poster for The Cat and the Canary (1939) in one shot, and bearing in mind when T.S. Elliot's source material was first published.