Cats (2019)

[Greg]

Yes, I could have seen Harriet, but no. We saw this instead.

I am hate watching. I am watching for the car wreck factor. Why did so many people hate this film.

To be fair, I have never seen the musical. I vaguely knew it was based on some. T.S. Elliot poems about cats. I probably would have let it slip by if the reaction to the film wasn't such a chorus of outrage. Plus, if you see the trailer you really want to know what the hell is going on here.

tQ had little desire to see this, so I started the film without her. She came in from her office when she heard the swell of music. She took one look at the screen and ran horrified back to her office.

It's bad. Or weird. I don't know what it is. It's creepy.

It looks great. The work they did to make the actors look like cats is phenomenal. But the songs and the story? Oh, boy. No. 

I thought the songs were terrible. There are a lot of references to Jellicle cats, which gets annoying. I looked it up. It's a shortening of Poor Little Cats. Yay. I'm glad I know that. But it doesn't help. And if a movie is talking all the time about Jellicle Cats and you are non-plussed by the word Jellicle. It's going to be a longe evening.

It was fun playing which actor played which cat. Rebel Wilson and James Corden are instantly identifiable. Actually, pretty much everyone is. Even T-Swizzle, who might have done the best number in the show.

But Cats is supposed to be all about the song Memories and Jennifer Hudson does a horrible job of it. Too much acting and not enough singing. We waited just to hear this song. The song pops up about three times. The third time does it some justice, but I was pretty sick of the movie by then.

As for the story, it's in there somewhere. Something about Dame Judi Dench who plays Deuteronomy who I think is the Queen of the cats gets to choose one special cat to go on to a better life and all the cats are competing to be this cat. Idris Elba plays the cat knocking off the competition to be the one special cat. 

So, don't see it. No swords. No good songs. Poor story. Looks great.

[Drunk Monk]

I can't believe you beat me to the punch on this one. You are the King of Cats. It's in our Netflix queue somewhere.

FWIW, the original musical, which I did see live, didn't have that much of a plot either. The original book was just a collection of poems about cats. The musical set those to music and then had some faint notion of a plot about one of the cats ascending to some higher level of catdom, but that's really not what drove the success of the show. It was in part the set, which was lavishly overdone, more so than others at the time, as well as the songs, dances and costumes, like any musical. I enjoyed it when saw it, but was fully aware of its shortcomings. It was a superficial musical at best, stage candy, but I found it cute back then.

[Drunk Monk]

Well that wasn’t no feckin Hamilton. That’s for damn sure. 

Gotta agree with Greg, point for point. How the hell did Hudson drop Memories? It’s such a mess, such a bloated waste of of a mess. So much talent, such a mangy fail. 

The songs feel really dated now. What made the live show work was the dance - get all these show people dancing like cats - that’s entertaining. But the choreo is cgi enhanced and cut with every move so it loses its grandeur. Case and point - the tap dance. That was awesome live. Here it was as if it was auto tuned.

I kept trying to imagine how all the visuals might be reset to a different soundtrack. Maybe a Bollywood Bhangra beat? No that’s not it. A J-pop neko bubble gum girl group? Nope. Thrash metal? Dub step? It’s unresolvable. 

It was a struggle to get to the end. Took more effort that The Human Condition with so little payout.

Twas nice to hear Dame Judy can still sing. 

And T-swizzle was the only redeeming act, but not that redeeming in the end.