When the Cats trailer was let out of the bag, it united theater fans and film fans (and the general public) under one thought: what the fuck?
Tom Hooper, of Les Miserables adaptation failure fame, has done it again. This time, however, he dragged Andy Blankenbuehler, choreographer of Hamilton, down with him.
The reactions were immediate and mean. When the movie was released, the reviews ranged from my personal favorite by Alan Corr which said, “I am not a cat person. Second off – after watching this frankly mortifying film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, I’m not altogether sure I am a movie person anymore either.”
To David Oliver’s review for USA Today, “The movie is outlandish and sexual and confusing. But that doesn’t make it a bad movie. In fact, I’m going to call it a good movie.”
I can’t help but wonder if these off-the-cuff judgements fair? David Oliver was nice enough, but should we be allowed to judge, so harshly, a film based on a bad musical? I guess the question I’m asking is: Did Cats deserve the cold reception during its opening weekend?
When I first watched the trailer, all I could think about was the pure star power that they managed to wrangle into this movie. It was similar to watching the trailer credits for Disney’s “live action” adaptation of The Lion King, but more befuddling because Cats lacks the backing of Disney. Disney, at least, could afford to hire Beyoncé.
Some of the casting choices in Cats were, frankly, unbelievable. Who looked at the Rum Tum Tugger and thought, Jason Derulo? And why did Jason Derulo look at the Rum Tum Tugger and think, “That could be me”? Also, I’m a Swiftie at heart, but I won’t say that Taylor Swift didn’t get what she deserved after she’s spent much of her career building her image around her love of cats. However, I’m not too proud to admit that the only part of the movie I enjoyed genuinely was the song that she wrote for it.
Judy Dench was here because she finally had the opportunity to be in Cats after having to pull out of the 1981 West End production.
I can’t say that I’m surprised about James Corden’s appearance in this film, though. My friend once suggested that he sold his soul to be in an episode of Doctor Who and with each passing role, I am slightly more convinced she’s right.
And with all of that being said: Jennifer Hudson absolutely had the right to walk off that set the second they asked her to crawl.
I saw the movie and it’s hard to put into words what I experienced in that theater. I mean, what’s noteworthy when you’re surrounded by consistently noteworthy things: should I mention Rebel Wilson unzipping her cat skin to reveal new, sexier cat skin? Do I point out Jason Derulo nearly sucking toes? Do I whisper about Sir Ian McKellen lapping up milk as he attempts to relive his life as a spry kitten? What about at the end, when Judy Dench herself looked into my soul and said, as if in a trance, that cats are not dogs?
At one point, I overheard a child whisper this is genius, which I think means she’s never seen a movie before.
And, listen: I loved every goddamn minute I was in that theater, but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how this sexually-charged disaster of a movie got away with only a PG rating. Even with the argument that it was never explicitly inappropriate, it was definitely a horror film.
I know the movie was a mess, but so are all of the cult classics we love to defend. Was it, visually, that much worse than watching Tim Curry serve Meat Loaf as dinner? Can you ensure that, in fifteen years, this won’t be the movie we’re showing our children on Halloween?
Like many of the cult classics that came before it, the glory of Cats is its utter failure. If Cats (2019) had been, like its predecessors, simply a film adaptation of the musical, it would have been boring. It would have been people running around dressed as cats, singing songs that are tolerable at best, performing a nonexistent plot. This works onstage because it’s in the audience, it’s interactive, it’s jovial. On the silver screen, it would have fallen flat; people would have fallen asleep instead of leaving the theater and demanding a refund. The reviews would have been lukewarm, and boring and, really, I’m so glad we were given the gift we were.
No matter how Cats was adapted, it would have been a flop. Knowing that, isn’t it better that the film went down in a blaze of hideous fury? Tom Hooper was given the choice between creating a film that would go down in the books as another mediocre movie musical, or creating a monstrosity of Biblical proportions and he took the option that would give him the most press. After all: people are talking about it, right?
Would I have preferred that we were given nothing? Yes, but I also would have preferred if Andrew Lloyd Webber had never started writing musicals in the first place. We can’t always get what we want.
And looking at Cats from a perspective outside of marketing, the point of art is to make you feel something. I don’t think that anyone who saw Cats can say they felt nothing throughout the entire runtime. Maybe you were disgusted by the snot constantly running down Jennifer Hudson’s face. Maybe you were afraid for the moment that Jason DeRulo’s mouth would finally fall on Francesca Hayward’s foot. Maybe you felt uncomfortably comfortable with how nude Idris Elba looked. Or, maybe, you just felt amused. Either way, you felt something. To me, that makes Cats art.
Now, I’m not blind. I’m not claiming that Cats is good art. Put kindly, this movie is an atrocity; it’s an affront to God that laughs at its own heresy. If, as Billy Joel says, only the good die young, Cats will live forever. If Tom Hooper ever dies, he’s going to hell. But, like most heretical things, Cats is fun. It’s fun to mock, it’s fun to be confused by, it’s fun to complain about, and it’s fun to read reviews of. Is it fair to judge a film based on a plot that its source material didn’t have? Should the sins of Andrew Lloyd Webber be shifted onto Hooper, Dench, and Swift?
Not to mention, we, as a society, made a sport about seeing Cats. We bought tickets, and dragged our friends, and murmured about it around the water cooler:
Have you seen it yet? I watched the trailer. I saw it while high. My friends went drunk. What did you think?
Cats isn’t a movie that was only seen by old people at 2 PM showings, it’s a movie that people chose to go to– for fun. Even though it’s in the red (it lost around 70 million dollars), it wasn’t a movie that no one saw. And, unlike some of the highest grossing films of all time (cough Avatar cough), no one can forget what they saw in that theater.
With that, my final judgement of Cats is that it deserved a warmer welcome into this cold, dark world that it never asked to be brought into.
Disclaimer: I’m not responsible for anyone who chooses to go see Cats after reading this article.
