Cats

And The Christmas Talent Show

Meow that’s what I call music! I’m not a musical theater person, and I can’t say I was initially psyched to see “Cats”. I thought to myself, “It’s just another Broadway adaptation, there’s always so many of those.” And I conveniently forgot, like everyone else, that “Cats” is gibberish, and not at all fit for a straight cinematic narrative. At least until the reviews came in, and they said that, no, “Cats” isn’t a bad movie… it’s a TERRIBLE movie. Thus, my interest was piqued. I cannot resist the siren call of truly terrible cinema. I still feel a near contact high from watching “Madame Web” in theaters a year ago. How could I say no to Dame Judi Dench and Idris Elba as dishy, swishy CGI cats?

The goal was to smash the wandering storyline of the popular stage show into a traditional narrative, and like a blind blacksmith with a deadline, they somehow pulled it off. Dancer Francesca Hayward immediately ended her Hollywood career here as Victoria, who is lost on the streets until a group of Jellicle Cats surround and recruit her. She may be a Jellicle cat, or maybe she has the potential to be a Jellicle cat, or maybe they just have a DEI initiative for their Jellicle gang and needed a non-Jellicle. They’re all getting ready for the Jellicle Ball, where they’re going to perform for the right to enter the Heaviside Layer, which seems to be an afterlife but might just be a really exclusive cat club where they drink milk out of champagne glasses.

Everyone she bumps into is some sort of a character, even though some are named Gus or Alonso, and others are named Jennyanydots and Rum Tum Tugger. They all get a chance to sing (not bad, admittedly) and dance (also impressive), and the performances are going to be the reason you enjoy this nonsense. Given that we’re not on stage, though, there is some cognitive dissonance. This is clearly a world made for humans, so why are the cats human-sized? When cats dance on top of a staircase, are we meant to imply the cats are the same height as humans, or are humans in this world just ridiculous giants who can’t build simple things in the proper proportion? And these are cats, right? Ignoring that many of them clearly are 75% human and 25% digital catsuit, there is a moment when Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson) unzips her fur. Is Jennyanydots in a cat outfit? Is she not a cat? If she’s not a cat, what is she? This is called “Cats”, right?

This is a loaded cast in these colorful uniforms, although you’d never imagine them in the same room. If you think Jason Derulo is obnoxious, you won’t like him any more as a cat. Same for James Corden, who must have had a dark night of the soul when he looked in the mirror and saw himself in a soon-to-be-a-digital-cat getup and realized he’s spending the day filming songs where he talks about being a huge fatass. Dench and Sir Ian McKellan are stage veterans, so they know the score. But Elba as a massive bad-guy cat who whips off the trenchcoat he’s inexplicably wearing to dance in the nude? I hesitate to ask, but… is that for someone?

Since poor Hayward’s character consists of watching everyone else sing and dance until the movie decides she’s the main character, the real standouts are the best voices of the bunch. As Grizabella, Jennifer Hudson gets to bring the house down and sing “Memory”, the one “Cats” song that non-”Cats” people spent the movie’s first 90 minutes expecting to hear. And, oh look, there’s Taylor Swift somehow not embarrassing herself as a flat-out sexy cat doing sexy cat things. I have no opinions on Taylor Swift, but it’s cool she’s built this cinematic legacy for herself so far of pretty arbitrary choices and appearances. I get no thrill out of seeing her hurt, but I have to say, her bit at the beginning of “Amsterdam” (which I saw while in the halfway house) where she seems like she’s gonna drive the plot until she’s run over by a car in front of everyone around minute ten is pretty much the most awesome way someone like her can make a cinematic exit.

It seems obvious to hire someone for a previously-established skill set, except that who told anyone director Tom Hooper has this skill set? Hooper had previously made the questionable “Les Miserables”, a handsome production with a stellar cast that might as well have been co-directed by Matt Murdock and Stan Brakhage. Constantly in that film, we’re looking at a shoulder, or the side of a face, or some CGI horizon that doesn’t need to be in the shot. His trademark, from his Oscar-winning “The King’s Speech”, is to capture an actor in the bottom left-or-righthand corner of the frame so that the remaining 70% of the image is overhead dead space, a dumb motif that never illuminates character, story or theme. He doesn’t do that in “Cats”, which is a small blessing. But he still doesn’t seem to understand where to put the camera, making all the dance sequences (many stuffed with extras) feel claustrophobic and insular. It’s like he really wanted us to be excessively close to these felines, even with the camera still and the dancers hitting different marks on-and-then-off-and-then-back-on-camera. Tom Hooper makes movies that are hard to look at. With “Cats”, he’s made one of the biggest eyesores in cinematic history.

The let’s-put-on-a-show aspect of the movie reminded me of the annual Christmas shows we had in prison. In my last spot, the chapel would be packed to watch inmates perform in a talent show. To be fair, most of us were just laughing at each other, though I’m not sure if everyone was completely aware of this. You have to understand, the word “talent” was entirely relative. A couple of guys could play instruments, and they were not bad. Not a lot of singers in those groups, though.

One guy would come up and read “Twas The Night Before Christmas” out loud, which was a curious “talent” considering his reading wasn’t particularly interesting or dynamic. One guy sang “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” but he couldn’t at all reach the high notes. I soon realized the most enthusiastic performers were usually dealing with incredibly long sentences. With more than a decade left (and sometimes a decade already down), these men would come to the talent show and do the exact same routine every single year. One year, I tried standup comedy, but seeing these guys run through performances they’ve given every single year was just a bit too downbeat for me to be around.