Cats (2019)

Cats.

My God. Someone made this.

Cats.

Well, I did go to see it to see if it merited the nearly universal negative response it got. I mean, 18% on Rotten Tomatoes means somebody liked it. Would I get it? I’m not overly familiar with the play it’s based on aside from, you know, that one song. Besides, a few weeks ago, I saw some video on YouTube basically arguing no matter how it turned out, director Tom Hooper more or less guaranteed it would be weird. And it sure looked weird, so let’s see how weird and if it could possibly appeal to people outside a few corners on the Internet that have certain…proclivities.

So, here’s the thing: normally, I would be very careful not to reveal spoilers about the movie. But something about Cats makes that impossible. Not because I want to, but because there really aren’t any spoilers to be had. This movie doesn’t really have a plot. My understanding of the stage musical is it doesn’t really have a plot either, but here we are.

Essentially, a kitten named Victoria (ballerina Francesa Hayward) is abandoned in the streets of London, but then falls in with the Jellicle cats. What’s a Jellicle cat? I have no idea. But they’re having a competition for Old Deuteronomy (Dame Judy Dench) to see who can gain a new life of his or her dreams somehow, and evil magic cat Macavity (Idris Elba) really wants to win it this time.

So, the stakes are winning a talent show.

Oh, and there’s also a good magical cat played by Laurie Davidson who despite being good seems to be named after the devil.

OK, so we have a nearly plotless movie which basically opens with a song, then has at best minimal spoken dialogue before jumping to the next song and set piece as the human-cat hybrids sing and dance around a much larger place. Aside from the faceless woman who abandoned Victoria, there are no human characters to be seen, and we have a lot of cats with famous faces from the likes of Rebel Wilson, James Cordon, Sir Ian McKellen, and Taylor Swift. And…that’s the entire movie.

I will say this much: it never gets sane. If it looks like it might be becoming something even remotely normal, something weird will happen. And that’s with me accepting the not quite cat characters at face value. That’s right: there’s weird stuff on top of the human-cat hybrids. This movie just can’t help being weird even as the songs didn’t seem all that memorable.

The net result is we have sights like McKellen lapping from a giant bowl and Cordon coughing up a hairball. Cats make like they’re going to rub their heads against each other and the occasional hard object, and none of them look quite big enough to be cats. Squirrels maybe. They just look too small in some scenes compared to their surroundings.

I suppose I could say at least some nice things about it. So, here goes.

The special effects actually aren’t that bad all things being equal. The way the cats’ tails and ears move is rather fluid and largely works.

And I did say there is one really memorable song in the musical/movie, and they had the foresight to give it to the best singer in the cast. As such, when Jennifer Hudson belted out “Memories,” I got a little teary-eyed. The movie certainly didn’t earn that. Too many bad cat puns and just plain weird stuff, but Hudson’s voice by itself certainly does.

Cats has all the makings of a potential cult classic. It’s not even remotely good, but it also doesn’t really hide what it is. See it if you want to see an out-and-out train wreck.

Grade: D

Yeah, Hudson’s solo keeps this from being an F. I still don’t really recommend the movie at all outside of morbid curiosity.