Review of Cats (2019) by Davrosdaleks1 — 21 Dec 2019

I know this is getting a lot of bad review, but I really enjoyed Cats. This is such a wildly imaginative movie in both story and appearance.

In order to help explain the plot, it helps to look at this film's origins. At first, there were a bunch of poems about cats written by T.S. Elliott in the 1930s. Then came the crazy idea to turn them into songs for an eighties musical. It really didn't have any spoken words. A loose story was added to tie the songs together. Now we've got a film trying to to sell this loose concept to a general audience. I don't think it did too bad a job.

The movie takes the basic musical and adds some dialogue and a little more to flesh things out. The story is this: a bunch of cats compete in order to win the honor of cat reincarnation. The story still isn't big; a lot of this is just the contestants introducing themselves through song. (You can go through multiple numbers without dialogue.) Still, I feel it works well enough. Don't get me wrong, the whole thing is kind of nuts. We've got a whole bunch of humanoid felines doing a bunch of random stuff. (Also, some of them are magic apparently.) But that's what I like about this. It's basically creative pageantry that is just trying to have fun. (Although, there is this really dark turn in the Jenny Anydots song, which wasn't in the previous works. It left a bad taste.).

Director Tom Hooper really tried to keep the highlights of the musical: the songs and the dancing. A lot of musical movie adaptations have to cut stuff for time, but this one is surprisingly intact. The movie manages to keep all but one song I believe. Fans of the original be prepared that they change up the lyrics or musical tempo or style for some of the numbers. (I think the movie was trying to update these to appeal to the mainstream.) Personally, I didn't find any of the changes too outrageous.

As for the songs, well Memory, which the musical is best known for, is an excellent piece. The other numbers, though... Well, these contain thirties lyrics and peculiar feel to a lot of them. I think the songs are decent, but they don't compete with a bunch of other musicals. They're a bit of a selective taste. The new song Beautiful Ghosts (the one they usually create for films in order to get a best original song Oscar nomination) is okay. The lyrics are very poetic, but the music can't live up to them.

One of the things I like best about this is that it brings back what is missing in a lot of modern musicals: the extended dance sections. The choreography is really good the cinematography does a fluid job of displaying the action. There is a real distinctiveness to people dancing like cats.

This movie is eye-candy personified. All the sets are huge, dreamlike, and colorful in a dark neon sort of way (as confusing as that sounds.) There are these big fantastic-looking set pieces and so many of them.

The cats are created using computer graphics on mo-cap actors. The people-cats are definitely distinctive looking. The animation for the faces never quite feel natural, but it I didn't find it to be a deal breaker either.

For a movie where people act like cats, I'm impressed that almost the entire cast really committed to this. Idris Elba seems to be having a hell of a time eating up the scenery. It's rather fascinating seeing how veteran actors Judi Dench and Ian McKellan take such goofy actions as rubbing heads together or scratching themselves so seriously. McKellan puts so much work into his character's mannerisms that I think this is one of his best roles. The lead Francesca Haywood, a ballerina, does a fine job as the newbie to the group.

Remember when I said "almost?" Well, Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots is the only actor who doesn't feel like they're trying to play a character. She's just doing Rebel Wilson stuff and throwing jokes. The character Jennyanydots as she plays her doesn't really match the character as described in her introductory song.

This movie, especially the songs may not be for everyone. It's kinda artsy, but I found this to be a truly unique and creative ride. I say give it a shot.