Movie Breakdown: Cats

Pre-Screening Ramble:

I’ve never seen the Cats musical.  I also think that the cat-people in this adaptation all look fairly creepy.  It is, however, directed by Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, The Danish Girl), and that’s reason enough for me to give it a shot.

Post-Screening Ramble:

To be honest, I went into Cats hoping it would be bonkers.  I wanted it to be the biggest, weirdest musical ever, and it’s not that at all.  As it turns out, it’s just a long, boring musical about cats.  Sure, some of it is kind of nutty, like Rebel Wilson’s Jennyanydots and her squad of cockroaches (with horrific CG human faces) that she eats if they don’t dance to her liking, but the rest of it is straight fodder for theater kids.  I really did try to get into it, but after so many mentions of Jellicle cats living the Jellicle way at the one time of the year where they get together and make their Jellicle choice (one cat goes to Heaven or something), I ended up taking a Jellicle cat nap for roughly 15-20 minutes.  When I woke, the Jellicle cats were still doing the same Jellicle shit and I spent the last chunk of the film just desperately wanting them all to be wiped out by some sort of Jellicle flu epidemic.  Talk about a test of my patience.

Cats is not something I had any business seeing.  I thought that maybe it would be bad in a good way, but it was just a slog.  Unless you’re a cat person who loves overcooked musicals, don’t see this.

One Last Thought:

Whenever Jennifer Hudson sings in this movie, it is breathtaking.  What a voice.  On the flip side of that, her character always has a dual shot of snot streaming out of her nose.  I assume this was done on purpose?  Either way, it was distracting and I spent a lot of time wishing another kitty would help her out with a tissue.