Cats
Year: 2019
Director: Tom Hooper
Starring: James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Francesca Howard, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift & Rebel Wilson
Runtime: 110 mins
BBFC: U
Published: 05/01/20 (Legacy Review)
Director: Tom Hooper
Starring: James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Francesca Howard, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift & Rebel Wilson
Runtime: 110 mins
BBFC: U
Published: 05/01/20 (Legacy Review)
Where do I even begin...I am actually somewhat speechless. Tom Hooper, a once respected filmmaker who brought classics like The Kings Speech and Les Miserables to screen, has crafted an actual abomination of a film with very few redeeming qualities to it. Cats is without a doubt one of the worst things committed to film in the last decade. It is a straight adaptation of the stage show, however as anyone who has seen the stage show could attest to, it never would have worked the same way on film. Cats, the musical, is famous for having almost no story; and the film greatly suffers from this as it is 110 minutes of characters signing about themselves with no end goal in sight until it abruptly ends with no explanation as to what just happened. This could be somewhat forgiven however if, like the stage show, it was able to place all its bets on the strength of the astounding singing talent, incredible choreography and spellbinding set design. The film also massively falls short in every single one of these areas. The musical numbers are, aside from ‘Memories’ performed by Jeniffer Hudson, all extremely disappointing. Casting went atrociously wrong across the board. Some members of the cast are clearly not musical theatre singers (Jason Derulo) and as a result it comes across as awkward and amateur that he can’t quite work out how the song really needs to be performed and changes how he sings halfway through the damn song. Others like Judi Dench phone in their performances. Then you’ve got the downright peculiar with people like Rebel Wilson & Taylor Swift not being able to do British accents very well, Derulo falls into this category too but the less said about his train wreck of a performance the better.
The dancing is horrible! Gone is the classic Cats choreography of part ballet, part jazz, part cat and in is...hip-hop? Fucking hip-hop? On top of that the whole thing of the cast moving like cats is out the window. Judi Dench and Ian McKellen are too old to do that shit so they just walk like humans everywhere. Everybody else just looks a little janky besides Francesca Hayward who is (surprise!) a ballet dancer by profession. It’s also just not filmed very well, most of the time they focus on the actors faces during dance sequences so you can still work out who is who but as a result you miss all the (awful) choreography.
Finally there’s the visual spectacle and oh boy is it a spectacle. It’s actually a bit sickening at times, like all the perspectives are off and things don’t geometrically add up to what they should. The closest visual representation I can think of is something out of the video game in Spy Kids 3 where all the colours and geometry of the world is so bizarre. Yes the actors famously are not even attached to the ground they walk on, their stationary feet slide around on a stationary ground from where either their fur or the environment has not been animated properly. The fact this film even got released in such a state is beyond comprehension and it’s just so utterly spellbinding. How something can go so disastrously wrong like this is almost unbelievable.
So yes, Cats is awful, don’t watch it, or if you do make sure you’re getting drunk.
The dancing is horrible! Gone is the classic Cats choreography of part ballet, part jazz, part cat and in is...hip-hop? Fucking hip-hop? On top of that the whole thing of the cast moving like cats is out the window. Judi Dench and Ian McKellen are too old to do that shit so they just walk like humans everywhere. Everybody else just looks a little janky besides Francesca Hayward who is (surprise!) a ballet dancer by profession. It’s also just not filmed very well, most of the time they focus on the actors faces during dance sequences so you can still work out who is who but as a result you miss all the (awful) choreography.
Finally there’s the visual spectacle and oh boy is it a spectacle. It’s actually a bit sickening at times, like all the perspectives are off and things don’t geometrically add up to what they should. The closest visual representation I can think of is something out of the video game in Spy Kids 3 where all the colours and geometry of the world is so bizarre. Yes the actors famously are not even attached to the ground they walk on, their stationary feet slide around on a stationary ground from where either their fur or the environment has not been animated properly. The fact this film even got released in such a state is beyond comprehension and it’s just so utterly spellbinding. How something can go so disastrously wrong like this is almost unbelievable.
So yes, Cats is awful, don’t watch it, or if you do make sure you’re getting drunk.