“I know it’s a little late for you, but we’re going to see Cats at 10:30. Would you want to join us?”
That was the question posed to me while waiting in line to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker with my friends (the same friends with whom I met Tommy Wiseau and who showed me Ryan’s Babe for the first time) on December 14, 2019. It lead to an enjoyable night out, but I have not known true peace since the credits rolled on that movie.
What’s The Plot?
But the Jellicles needs to be on the lookout – cat super-criminal Macavity and his henchcats are looking to make him the Jellicle Choice and will go to great lengths to do so…
Who Made This Beautiful Garbage?
Five Reasons to See It
- Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber co-wrote an original song for the flick. It’s a lyrical counterpoint to the musical best known song “Memory” entitled “Beautiful Ghosts“, in which Victoria sings about how she’d love to have the lost glory days that Grizabella laments. It’s pretty good and helps craft some kind of through-line for the characters (lacked by the stage version).
- Every animal character that appears, including cockroaches trained to dance by Rebel Wilson’s Jennyanydots, have the same weirdly human faces as the cats. This makes Jennyanydots’ casual eating of the cockroaches even freakier looking.
- The scale of the cats to their surroundings varies wildly from shot to shot. It’s all part of the flick’s foul attempts to drive you mad.
- Macavity (Idris Elba) has, per Bombalurina’s (one-scene-wonder Taylor Swift) ode to him, broken “every human law”. How a cat has evaded taxes and targeted cultural sites during war I don’t know, but he found a way.
- Judi Dench’s Old Deuteronomy is occasionally called “Old Doot”. The highly respected leader of the cats, who decides who gets to die and be reincarnated, is called “Doot”.
Recommendation
This film is like a train wreck – you don’t want to keep looking, but you simply cannot look away. They tried really hard to take a plotless musical about some cats competing for the chance to die into a movie with some sort of plot, and they succeed to an extent, but the photo-realistic CGI cat people and the holdovers from the stage version ultimately render it one long acid trip you can safely watch with grandma.
