Despite being the fourth longest running Broadway musical of all time, most people will agree that Cats is up there as one of the most ridiculous concepts to ever hit the stage. And that ‘Memory’ is one of the most torturous songs of all time. Nevertheless, the announcement of a live action film adaptation piqued the interest of musical nerds everywhere. Because how could it possibly work? We awaited the trailer with bated breath, and were stunned with the result. People as cats. Cats with boobs. So many things wrong, and the uncanny valley was intense. Tom Hooper reportedly took the criticisms onboard and worked on altering the film up until the day of release. So did he succeed?
If his aim was to invoke PTSD in every audience member, then maybe. Given how much Hooper’s films tend to drip from every orifice with Oscar bait, one can only assume that he was tripping on acid for the entire duration of filming and post-production. His take on Les Misérables had its flaws but Cats makes Russell Crowe’s performance as Javert look Oscar-worthy. (If you need your memory jogged, he was abysmal.)
For those unfamiliar with the Cats “narrative” if you can even call it that, the film is fairly loyal to the stage production, which is based on T.S. Eliot’s collection of poems. The Jellicle cats are all preparing for the annual ball where one cat will be selected to go to the Heaviside Layer to be re-incarnated. Cue Rebel Wilson dancing with cockroaches, Jason Derulo making the girl cats lap up their milk, Idris Elba hissing at everyone, Ian McKellen boring the audience to tears, Taylor Swift turning up for five seconds to drug everyone and shake her cat boobs, Jennifer Hudson flying away in a hot air balloon, and then Judi Dench breaking the fourth wall to tell the audience to never call cats dogs. Yep.
This is easily the worst work everyone in the cast has ever done. Rebel Wilson does her usual schtick but it’s never been as absolutely unbearable as it is here. Together, her and James Corden make the only deliberate attempts at comedy but they fall flat. Jason Derulo is awful in what is usually the most fun role, The Rum Tum Tugger, and the fact that he doesn’t croon “JASON DERULOOOOO” at any point is also extremely disappointing. Taylor Swift, for all the fanfare around her involvement, is in the film for less than ten minutes and is garbage. The new song that she has co-written with Andrew Lloyd Webber, ‘Beautiful Ghosts’, is also trash.
Idris Elba as the villain of the piece, Macavity, contributes the strongest performance of all the A-listers, and you can’t help but feel sorry for him getting stuck in this absolute shit show. Jennifer Hudson also does her best but it’s hard to take her seriously as an old dishevelled ‘glamour’ cat who sings the most unbearable song that has ever existed in the history of time. Ian McKellen does what has always been the most boring song in the musical (‘Gus The Theatre Cat’) and if you thought Gandalf could save it, think again! Instead he manages to shit all over his own career. Judi Dench looks like the Cowardly Lion out of The Wizard of Oz, and watching the great dame curl up purring in a cat bed while the rest of the cats sing and dance is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever witnessed.
The CGI, used to give the actors fur, is appalling.* The costumes in the stage production are more convincing. Don’t take your children to this unless you actually hate them because they will probably have nightmares for several years. Rebel Wilson eating tap-dancing cockroaches with human faces will scare even the bravest adult. In terms of set design, everything was made bigger to give a better sense of the cats’ smaller size. But this doesn’t even make sense because IN WHAT UNIVERSE IS A PIECE OF ROAST POTATO THE SAME SIZE AS A CAT’S HEAD?
There are few redeeming features. Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton) contributes some strong choreography, with ‘Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat’ being the highlight. That was also due to the performance of Aussie Steven McRae, with the lesser known cast members – including Robert Fairchild and Francesca Hayward – generally contributing the strongest performances acting and dancing wise (the three of them are professional ballet dancers). Having said that, Hayward’s constant doe-eyes grow tiresome and she certainly wasn’t cast for her singing. Apparently nobody else was either.
The music in general sounds awful. Andrew Lloyd Webber did actually write some decent songs for the musical, but you wouldn’t know it from the film’s soundtrack. It never pops where it should; instead it feels like something in the sound mixing has been turned down so it remains flat and dull. The Rum Tum Tugger should ROCK IT, but instead I had no idea why the cats were so turned on.
It’s no small feat to take the mantle of worst film of the decade with mere days to spare, but Cats has done it. It’s worse than Batman Vs Superman. And if you thought the film couldn’t be any worse than the stage production, you’d be sorely mistaken. The experience of watching this film is akin to a drug-induced nightmare. It’s bizarre, haunting, and when it’s over there’s little more you can do than curl up in the foetal position and rock back and forth until you forget. But you probably never will.
Cats is in cinemas from 26th December through Universal Pictures.
*Following the backlash, with almost universally negative reviews, Hooper has scurried to update some of the visual effects and asked for a new copy of the film to be shown in cinemas. It won’t make a difference. This nightmare goes way beyond visual effects.
