Review: Cats

From the terrifying first trailer to the scathing reviews, I knew at some point in my life I was going to watch Cats. It was too much of an anomaly, too high-budget a disaster for me to ignore, I didn’t want to watch it, I HAD to see just how bad it was. And fuck me was this an absolutely terrifying fever dream filled with an uncomfortable amount of drugs, sex and music without having any drugs or sex and too much music.

I’m genuinely scarred for having seen it all the way through.

Let’s start with the plot. There isn’t any. And I’m not just saying that to be funny, this entire film is 90 minutes of introductions, 10 minutes of actual story and the other 10 minutes is weird panting and gyrating. Here I’ll give you a rundown of what happens; we open with our lead Victoria being abandoned by her owners, she’s introduced to the Jellicle Cats with their Jellicle Ball – and sidenote, they never explain what a Jellicle is and why it’s important to be one despite them saying Jellicle about 587 fucking times in the first five minutes – who take her to see the cats hoping to become the Jellicle choice and live a new life in the fucking sky or something.

I swear to Christ, the little plot I can recognise as a story makes me think this is about a fucking suicide cult.

From there Victoria meets Rebel Wilson’s hairy cooch, Jason Derulo’s CGI bulge, James Corden’s fat arse, a couple thieving twins who I couldn’t tell if they were related or not because of the fuck me eyes they were flashing at each other, Judi Dench’s old face and Ian McKellen making Meow noises before we actually get to the Jellicle Ball in which the contestants are STILL being introduced since the bad guy – Idris Elba and his unnervingly smooth fur body – has been stealing all the contestants with magic – oh by the way there’s fucking MAGIC in this film, they kinda dropped that on you without warning – so anyone who’s still taking part in the Ball we’ve never fucking seen before, making their musical numbers an exercise in futility because I don’t know them and I don’t want to fucking know them.

Those two paragraphs cover around 80% of the story, all this film has is cats introducing themselves through song for an hour and a fucking half and then getting lucky if they have anything to say afterwards. It’s not a plot, it’s a fucking 2 hour montage of people we’ve never seen before and it doesn’t stop, new characters are still being introduced with their own numbers with over half the film already done.

The only time it actually works is with Mr Mistoffelees who, despite a fairly low amount of screen-time, has been shown to be a cowardly magician and needs confidence to do Big Magic, that works but it comes so late into the game that it couldn’t save the rest of this train wreck.

And before anyone dares defend this film, I know it’s based on a musical and I know it’s a different medium, but Hamilton managed to tell an entire historical story with only singing, this is just cats singing about themselves without a story to give them a reason to sing about themselves.

The cast is absolutely stacked with big names who are given nothing to work with, and the ones that have something are the weakest actors in the film, I feel kinda bad for Francesca Hayward who plays Victoria because she’s suppose to be our lead, our surrogate into this bizarre, fucked up world of the Jellicle Cats and she’s given nothing, out of all the speaking parts she has probably the fewest amount of lines, every face she makes has this big wondrous smile about EVERYTHING, no matter how benign, and sure she dances well but in a film where everyone is dancing that doesn’t stand out. This is Hayward’s big theatrical break and she’s the most forgettable element in the film, which ironically might save her career.

Out of everyone Victoria meets during the many MANY introductions she has to suffer through, not one of them make it worthwhile to sit through their number. Jason Derolo - who I just hate in general anyway – sings about how Rum Tum Tugger is a fussy little cunt then screams for milk, Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer were the thieving twins who looked like they wanted to do a furry version of a Bratty Sis video, and I didn’t know they were twins until writing this review so that just knocks the film even lower for me. There was also a tap dancing train conductor who serves no fucking purpose, Ray WInstone hissing and wondering where the fuck his career has gone and Taylor Swift who even in a film filled with unnecessary sexual energy, gave off too much sexual energy.

Seriously man, I got Lola Bunny flashbacks during her number.

Worst of the lot was Rebel Wilson and James Corden as Jennyanyfots and Bustopher Jones respectively, I already dislike these two before going into the film and having them both talk the most out of almost any other character was a kick in the fucking dick. Wilson’s introduction was this disturbing piece where she did the most unsexy sexy poses while the camera focussed on her naked hairy body before bringing in singing mice and marching cockroaches with human faces which Jenny proceeds to eat several of when she’s not singing. Corden meanwhile sings for five minutes about being a fat fuck and eating a lot, that’s the entirety of his character, he’s fucking fat, and the fact that both of them are just allowed to skit and makes shitty jokes is simultaneously distracting from the actual plot while adding nothing to the plot either. Both of them were just playing themselves in fur suits and like I said I think both are fucking overdone anyway so I didn’t give a shit about them either way.

The only people I see coming out of here unscathed are Ian McKellen and Judi Dench who both have strong enough careers to look past this blip, although Dench’s monologue at the end where she looks at the camera goes on WAY too long about how a cat is not a dog (the fuck?) and every pause makes you think that it’s finally over but no, she keeps fucking going. Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella should also be ok, despite being important to the film she only has three scenes but among those three is her version of the famous ‘Memories’ number which is unironically good, hell I’d say too good for this turd of a film. I’m also hoping that Idris Elba comes out of this unaffected, his villain Macavity is suitably villainous and his motivations generically evil enough – he wants to be the Jellicle Choice because Fuck You I guess – that Elba can work something out with the material but between nobody being able to recognise the most wanted cat in town and his own horrifying nude cat-body, I doubt he’s getting away from this thing clean.

Director Tom Hooper has done a few things of note over the last few years, namely his last three films were all Oscar winners and he brought Les Mes to the big screen so I can see why he’s be chosen for this. But holy hell does he fuck this up, this has to go down as one of the biggest fuck-ups of direction of the 21st Century because while Hooper doesn’t do anything technically wrong, nothing he does is done right.

Let’s get the big one out of the way; the cats look fucking weird, I knew the cats looked weird, I saw the trailer, I saw the memes, but nothing prepared me for the seeing them in full CGI horror, the first time I saw a Cat-Man clamber down a brick wall, looking like a human being contorting their body into some kind of fucking Cronenberg nightmare with a tail I realised that this was so much worse than I thought it was going to be. It’s the deepest level of the uncanny valley I’ve seen since The Rock in The Mummy Returns and that was 18 fucking years before this, nobody looks human but they don’t look like a cat either, they’re a disgusting hybrid of the two, these vaguely human looking faces pasted onto what looks like skin-tight cat-suits made with actual cat flesh, it NEVER sits right with you.

What makes it even more uncomfortable is that there seems to be no rhyme of reason to the clothing, a few cats wear clothing but most of them are nude and some of them even take off their clothes making them nude and I’m left wondering if this is just a nudist colony with lax rules or if everyone is suppose to be naked and we’re just suppose to accept it. I know I shouldn’t be this focussed on naked cat people but I can’t help it, this movie has forces naked cat people into my fucking brain and given me no fucking logic about why they’re naked, hell I haven’t even touched upon the Rebel Wilson scene where she unzips her naked fur-body, as in literally takes off her skin, to reveal a dance outfit underneath.

It’s the tightness as well, I don’t know why they went out of their way to make the cats sexy but it just feels wrong, all the naked cat actors have all their curves pronounced so that every breast, every bulge, every butt covered in fur is on full display but without any form of genitals. Elba gets the worst of it because his fur colour is identical to his skin colour leaving him looking like a fucking Ken Doll with ears but not one person looks good like this. And that’s not even talking about how horny this film is, I heard the stories, I read the reviews that talked about how sexual the film was but it’s not until you’re seeing this cat people twist their bodies together, panting in unison and nuzzle into each other that you have to take a step back and realise that humans doing cat actions is trying way too hard to be sexy whilst not trying to be sexy. The Jellicle Ball is the most horrific example, it’s the hissing, the panting, the Judi Dench hairy leg spread, I honestly couldn’t tell you if the film was trying to be this sexual and went way too far or if it wasn’t trying at all and just came off that way by accident.

I haven’t even touched upon the fucking music because I don’t know how to, the visual disaster overpowers the audio so much that I can’t tell if anyone actual sung during this film or not. Ok, overexageration, a few songs worked but only a few, the aforementioned Memories hit well and I was fine with the Mr Mistoffelees number but outside of them I really can’t remember any of the songs being any good. The opening introduction to the Jellicle Cats was upbeat I guess, I was too disteacted by the CONSTANT use of Jellicle, Jennyanydots was too distracting with the human cockroaches and under-skin dress change for me to even remember what the song was. Tugger and Bustopher were both boring, end of discussion, McKellen’s small number as Gus felt like a lot of build-up for a limp-dick crescendo and Swift’s piece of Macavity trying to big him up almost worked as a villain song if I wasn’t distracted by the complete lack of Idris Elba penis.

Before this film the only knowledge I had of Cats was hearing Memories here and there and the rape story from Team America, having now seen this film I know even less about Cats and I don’t want to know anything more about Cats. This is one of the strangest, most confusing, unsettling and fucked up pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen that wasn’t an intentional horror movie, I’ve never seen anything like Cats so 10/10 for uniqueness but just because nobody’s done it before doesn’t mean it’s a good idea and Cats the Movie was not a good idea. There’s no story, all we have is oversexed sexless Cat People introducing themselves for 2 hours before nothing happens and the film ends, nobody looks good, only a couple sound good, the CGI is a mess, the sexiness uncomfortable, the songs forgettable and the whole experience traumatising.

I’d say you have to see it just to get the full picture yourself but honestly you’re safer avoiding this.

2/10