Movie Review: Cats (2019)

Stars: 2 out of 5

Pros: Many of the songs are good

Cons: Bizarre looks combined with depressing story

The Bottom Line:

Famous musical

Some good songs in the soundtrack

But overall strange

Weird from Start to Finish

I have always been interested in seeing Cats, but it has never worked out to me to see a stage version.  I’ve heard mixed reviews of this musical overall, so I wasn’t sure what I would think, but I was still intrigued.  Then I started hearing how bad the new movie version was, and the trailers certainly confirmed that.  Still, I just couldn’t resist renting the DVD.  I’ve got wanting to see the musical out of my system now.

What little plot there is centers around a group of cats, the Jellicles, who reside in a neighborhood in London.  Our entry to this world is Victoria (Francesca Hayward), who has been dumped in their territory just in time for the yearly festival to see who will ascend to the Heaviside and be reborn into a new Jellicile life.

Right there, I’ve got issues with the plot.  We are holding a contest to see who dies and comes back to life?  While I say I don’t look at popular fiction for my theology, this entire premise didn’t sit well with me on multiple levels, one of them being the bad theology.   Not to mention it is a very dark, depressing premise.

The musical was inspired by a collection of T.S. Elliot poems on cats.  Honestly, if you just listened to some of the songs without any story or visuals, you’d understand why this musical is popular.  Many of them are fun, and they capture various cat personalities (and human personalities) perfectly.  Then there’s “Memories,” a hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking song.  Yes, the music is phenomenal, but what else would you expect from Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Likewise, the choreography is fun and inventive.  There were a few moments that made me cringe, but that is part of the entire movie’s visuals, which I will get to in a minute.

And I’m not going to fault the actors.  They are giving this production their all.  The film boasted about the all-stars in the cast, which include Judi Dench, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Taylor Swift, and Ian McKellen.  Honestly, this is an ensemble piece, so no one gets a ton of screen time, and I didn’t recognize many of the names of those in the cast.  Everyone does a good job of singing and trying to bring their characters to life.

Then there are the effects.  I found them impossible to look away from in a train wreck kind of way.  We can see the actor’s faces, but most of their bodies are covered by a CGI cat body and hair.  The movie was filmed on oversized sets, so we get the feel of life cat-sized.  I get what the director and producers were going for here.  I really do.  And I’m not sure how you could better capture that these are cats.  But it is still that odd mix of captivating horror that just doesn’t look right overall.

I think if I had enjoyed the story more, I might have forgiven the visuals.  However, the depressing story combined with the weird look make Cats a miss for me.  Now that I’ve seen it, I have no desire to see any form of this show again since I’d have the same issues with the story no matter what the visuals were.