Cats

Coming into this film I loved musicals, movies, Andrew loyd Webber and the feline species after this film you may hate all those things. Hitting the theaters at the most inopportune time comes the Hollywood Adaptation of the musical Cats, Itself an adaptation of a collection of T.S Eliot short stories. Before the release of this film, I always assumed Cats was a beloved classic of stage, In actuality , It's always been a bit divisive people either love or hate it. My younger sister and I would often watch the 1998 Film version on Pbs and had perused through Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, so I had a passing familiarity with the source material but that did not prepare me for the nightmare my mortal soul would face this day at the theater. Cats is a nightmare Howard P. Lovecraft may have had after reading too much Doctor Suess. The film hit theaters as a huge flop (so far making only 12 million against it's nearly 100 million dollar budget ) a big part of it was poor timing as it was released right after Frozen 2 and against Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker. Frozen Itself a musical with a huge fan-base one wonders how the person who decided to release the film during the run of frozen 2 wasn't fired. Yet, even if the timing of its release was better the film would still have the unfortunate distinction of being the worst film to run in theaters of two different decades (!) as it's December release will have it running in the last year of 0f the 2010s and the first year of the 2020s. From the opening scene onward the Special Effects took us headlong right Into Uncanny Valley territory. The first number is Almost acceptable other than the camera shots right up and through the perfectly separated and lovingly rendered ass cheeks of semi-CGI Cat Men. We are introduced to Victoria an abandoned kitten who lands up in the turf of The Jellicle Cats. The term Jellicle Cats has confused many film-goers and reviewers , It's the name of their weird cat suicide cult. Yup, the whole film is about a teenage girl getting recruited into a charismatic suicide cult. The members gather once a year under a full moon for a Musical competition where the winner is selected by the Leader to die by being sent to the Heaviside Layer in a hot-air balloon. Quick note: The Heaviside layer is in the Earth's upper atmosphere traveling there as a cat in such a manner I'm pretty sure would be the death of the hot air balloon traveling cat. After quickly dropping this info on us and giving many viewers no time to process this the film we jump to the most surreal nightmare fuel ever rendered onto the silver screen. We're introduced to a classist house cat portrayed by Rebel Wilson. Rebel Wilsons Character Jenny Everydots proceeds to break into dance number where she removes her skin or maybe some other poor cat skin she took to wear . She then forces Fat mice with human children's faces and cockroach people to dance for her for not being employed and if they don't live up to her standards she eats them! This isn't towards the middle of the film this is in the first fifteen minutes . You have to build up to this type of madness! I honestly almost vomited in this scene. I'm not going to break down the plot of the whole film but there is so much bad in the film that I could write a novel-length entry for each film. The Cats looking like cheap fur-covered blow-dolls with their constantly overly sexual gyrating are in no way arousing or appealing instead they're distracting and nauseating. Reaction shots seem to be chosen at random and have no connection to what's actually being reacted to! The female lead Victoria played by Franchesca Hayden constantly makes faces that seem right out of an erotic manga compounded by the fact that her voice sounds like that of a small child and her form is that of a CGI anime cat girl sex doll one is left deeply confused on how you are supposed to feel about this character, nay, the whole film. The film doesn't just have an inconsistent tone it seems to be completely tone-deaf. Sometimes the film builds up like something frightening will happen then nothing happens. Strange shaky go pro style filming that makes you think characters are being pursued when again nothing is happening. You would think this film was made by Tobe Hooper the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and not Tom Hopper the director of Les Misérables. The cats constantly change size, sometimes they're human sized, sometimes cat-sized sometimes 2 inches tall. A male cat sprays magic milk on to the female cats as they lay on their backs erotically smiling as it hits their faces whilst he is singing of his curious nature. Taylor Swift sprays magic cat piss/ catnip on to the other cats in a golden shower scene. Who is this film for? children? adults? furries? It's definitely not for everyone. The oddest thing is this musical has all the things wrong with it that people say about the modern big-budget films have wrong . Non-nonsensical plots , a waste of award-winning actors, an overblown budget and a reliance on CGI special effects. Is this what they call Irony? I don't know as I don't own a thesaurus. Judi Dench is actually incredible in the film as well as Jenifer Hudson and Ian Mckellen. Idris Elba is a perfect Macavity. To be fair, all the performers poured their hearts and souls into this film but it wasn't enough to save it. Even Franchesca Hayden the film's lead did a good job it just wasn't a good film for general audiences. This wasn't something that should not have had such a big budget and the film seemed to have no clear direction. Reaction shots have no real connection to anything and it almost seems as the poor editor had no idea what was happening in this film, perhaps, he was driven into madness like a Lovecraftian character glimpsing things beyond this realm? It relies too much on the audiences familiarity with the Stage production. The Studio assumes that Cats is as popular as Captain America or Phantom of the opera, what they like to call presold franchises. Phantom of the opera was also made int a musical by Andrew Loyd Webber and then a film. The thing about the phantom is everyone knows that character and story from thousands of other versions and parodies. He's a character loved by book readers, Horror fans and theater nerds alike. He's able to bring multiple fandoms under one banner something cats didn't really have going for it but I could be wrong maybe it'll bring together such diverse fans as Furries, b-movie lovers and Musical theater geeks. I do feel like this will be the new generation's Rocky Horror Or Plan Nine.