Let's start with the stage musical. Cats premiered on May 11, 1981 at The New London Theater in London and started its Broadway run October 7, 1982. It broke a record for ticket pre-sales on Broadway: $6.2 million, and was the most expensive Broadway show ever at the time costing $5.5 million to produce . Cats is adapted from Old Opossum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Elliot (published in 1939), with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It lacks any real plot, following a large group of Jellicile cats that are each competing/vying for a chance to be reborn into a better life. The London production opened to rave reviews, while Broadway's reception was more mixed. Cats remains Broadway's fourth longest running show of all time, with 7,485 performances. Despite it's financial success on stage, Cats is incredibly divisive. People that love the show are crazy about it, and people that hate it frickin despise it. This brings us to 2019.
Cats 2019 doesn't have much of a plot either. An abandoned cat named Victoria (Francesca Hayward) is taken in by the Jellicle cats and invited to watch their competition for who gets to be reborn/ "Go to the Heavy Side Layer". The rest of the film is just each competitor singing about him/herself while an evil cat named Macavity (Idris Elba) magics away his competition. It's anything but exciting. Luckily, unlike the stage productions, this film version constantly changes settings and there's always something weird, surreal, uncomfortable, or random to keep you awake. Judi Dench (as Old Deuteronomy), Francesca Hayward, Taylor Swift (as Bombalurina), James Cordon (as Bustopher Jones), Idris Elba, Ian McKellen (as Gus The Theater Cat), Robbie Fairchild (as Munkustrap), and Jennifer Hudson (as Grizabella, she nails 'Memory') aren't terrible but you can't help but feel that they aren't being helped by appearing in this film.
The CGI is uneven and inconsistent: the quality of the vfx jump between the spectrum of really good to OH GOD, I'M BLIND, sometimes between shots. The cats themselves certainly look bad (and this is the cleaned up version). They resemble something a furry might dream about/have a nightmare about. It's confusing why they chose to go this route when just having the actors wear spandex and leotards ala the stage productions would have cost less and been less distracting/nightmare inducing.
The backgrounds can also go from looking visually impressive and imaginative to resembling a poorly rendered video game cut-scene. There was screen tearing in some scenes as well. The whole film looks and feels very fake, it almost feels like you are watching a fully CGI film with no live-action elements at all.
As for the music production...it's not good either. The opening notes of the film had me checking to see if my ears were bleeding. There are a lot of bad, cheesy synths and such. That said, some of the songs are catchy and memorable (my favorite being Macavity, despite it having the single most nightmare inducing visual in the whole film).The editing by Melanie Ann Oliver is hectic, confused, and doesn't always make sense. The cinematography by Christopher Ross is good at times, pretty poor at others (the musical sequences generally aren't well shot. One example is the Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat song.). Andy Blankenbuehler was in charge of Choreography, and it's not great (though that might be for the above stated reason: The songs aren't shot well). Tom Hooper directed and co-wrote Cats (with Lee Hall), and he leaves much to be desired in both categories.
Apparently, there was an attempt to make an animated musical version of Cats with Don Bluth many years back that never panned out. Unfortunately, that is likely the only way a screen version of Cats would have worked. This 2019 miscarriage is pure madness. None of the choices this film makes make sense (Examples: two cats, and ONLY two cats, can be seen wearing sneakers throughout the film with no explanation. The last song features a baffling bad decision on Tom Hooper's part that solidly cements this film as shit).
There was never really any question if Cats 2019 was going to be bad....the question was exactly how bad was it going to be? The answer is: Worse than you can imagine. I'm not exactly sure I can say it's better or worse than the Broadway show, but both are definitely bad. I CAN say however that if given the choice to sit and watch the Broadway production or the 2019 film version, I would choose the film. I'm not saying I liked this film, I didn't. That said, I do appreciate an abysmally bad film and Cats transported me to a whole new solar system of awful. It's certainly something I hated BUT...I'd say it's still a must-see for any lover of terrible films (it also helps if you watch it while on mind-altering substances, so I've been told). Cats 2019 is a masterpiece of bad.
0.5 STARS
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