I cannot think of a film with a bigger “collective fever dream” energy than the absolute mess that was the 2019 movie musical extravaganza Cats. Tom Hooper’s second attempt to bring the spectacle and majesty of live musical theatre to film–the follow-up to his Oscar-winning Les Miserables–was a disaster, plain and simple. Five years have passed, and this movie has been torn to shreds a thousand times. And yet, there is still so much more this film can be ridiculed for in its aftermath.
I have a very personal beef with Cats. It was the first musical I ever saw live, I still own the 1998 recording of the musical, and one of my first dances for my old dance company was “Jellicle Cats.” I spent most of 2009 horrifically immersed in the world of Cats, and it was a weirdly formative experience. Despite my opinions on the musical and especially Andrew Webber souring over the years, I still have a minuscule soft spot for the nonsense that is the original musical. It’s a weirdly horny pseudo-fever dream that’s predicated on suspending all disbelief and living in the absolute insanity of it all.
It’s also a particularly apt time to look back on Cats in the wake of Wicked: Part 1’s release in November. The constant script, direction, and cast changes during Wicked’s production pushed its release date back three separate times–one of which was December 20. 2019, was transferred to Cats which had a troubled production itself.
Thus, five years ago, the world bore witness to the monstrosity of CGI fursuits and the aftereffects of an incredibly rushed post-production. And yet, before Wicked: Part 1, Cats was the swan song of studios marketing their musicals as big spectacles. Sure, West Side Story also marketed itself as a musical, but it also came out during the era of nebulous theatrical releases and was a remake of an incredibly popular musical adaptation. Due to timing or its spectacular failure, Cats felt like the last big musical marketed as such.
The issues with Cats start with adapting the musical in the first place. Structurally, Cats is a completely different beast from most classic Broadway musicals. There is no singular protagonist, no defined character motivation, and barely any story to speak of. It’s a megamusical; the appeal is the buck-wild spectacle of it all. The point is that it is nonsensical and grand. The closest thing to a developed character is Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson) and she’s barely in the musical. So, the baffling attempt to explain the world of the Jellicle Cats and force logic and structure into an experience that, inherently, lacks it immediately calls the practice of adaptation into question.
The worst offense is creating an audience surrogate and protagonist in Victoria (Francesca Hayward). In the musical, Victoria has absolutely zero significance; she gets a few mini-solos but is hardly important amongst the massive ensemble cast. But, that’s the point: none of the Jellicle cats are particularly special, they are a weird feline hive mind. I understand that just throwing an unsuspecting audience into the madness of Cats with no primer may sound unappealing, but trying to add structure into something purposefully structureless didn’t work either.
Hayward, a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, is hardly the biggest issue with the cast–that would be the “comic relief” of Rebel Wilson and James Corden (back when casting him was still a hot commodity). But, all three share the same issue–most of the cast lacks a musical theater background. This isn’t abnormal in Hollywood, but it’s a larger detriment in Cats: a musical that lives and dies by its massive, extravagant song and dance.
Instead of feeling like a unified ensemble cast, the levels of energy and skill are so disparate it feels like watching five different movies at once. I can give grace to Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) and Gus the Theatre Cat (Ian McKellan) sort of lagging behind since both cats are meant to be older after all. (Although I don’t particularly care for their reinterpretations.) However, the skill and stylistic gap between most featured performers, who range from pop stars to classically trained dancers, creates an unintentional aesthetic clash that grates the eyes and ears.
Beyond just the assault to the eyes that is the CGI fursuits, Cats is riddled with technical issues. Its visuals have been torn to shreds, and I have nothing else to add beyond more #ReleasetheButtholeCut jokes. But, the visuals are only the flashiest, in more ways than one, problem with Cats. My issues primarily lie with the sound editing and how it affects the quality of performances.
Now, I am not a sound engineer nor do I have an understanding of music beyond high school band. I recommend this video essay for more on Hooper’s decision to film Cats completely live, with the actors performing full-out and the on-set pianist having to adapt to their choices is both a technical failure and a danger to the actors. Essentially recording, especially singing, full-out for every take is expensive, time-consuming, and ultimately doesn’t improve upon the traditional method of recording vocals to an orchestra in post-production. Yes, it benefitted Hooper when he employed the same technique in filming Les Miserables with subsequent praise from the Academy. But, the flaws were still there. Cats, a musical dependent on the spectacle of song and dance, simply amplified them.
Building on the score and sound flaws, Cats truly crumbles when bending the score to the performance. The beats of the score are sometimes out of sync with the eight counts of the dance numbers which are, sometimes, out of sync with the singing. With the exception of something like “Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat”, which has its beat built-in via the rhythmic tapping of the dancer’s shoes, it’s rare that the music, singing, and dancing are perfectly in sync. Again, considering the incredibly varied singing and dancing talents, the performances are all over the place. The songs lag, the eight counts barely line up to the beat of the songs, and the time signatures are more of a suggestion.
Cats is such an interesting musical failure. From the name recognition of the cast to the alleged pedigree of the director, it should’ve been a slam dunk. Unfortunately, it was a failure so catastrophic that both non-musical fans and non-cinephiles alike were dunking on it. Perhaps its status as one of the last big tentpole films pre-COVID fed into the memes.
As someone who was primed to like the film prior to its release, my gripes and long-stewing hatred come from a vastly different place than most. The horniness and nonsensical plot are part and parcel; yes, it’s slightly disarming but it’s honestly the most faithful part of the film. No, the absolute failure to engage with the musical for what it is absolutely bugs me to no end. Add on Hooper’s insistence on “doing musicals differently” which resulted in a rancid film on every technical level, and it’s no wonder Hollywood avoided Cats–a film absolutely deserving of ire on all sides.
Retrospective Courtesy of Red Broadwell
Image Courtesy of Slate via Universal Pictures