I refrain from being hyperbolic when I say that Cats (2019) directed by Tom Hooper, based on the musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber, felt like a bad acid trip or fever dream. Time held no real meaning for its two-hour runtime and when the screen faded to black, I had to bite my tongue and hold back a string of confusion and expletives. I doubt I’ve clutched my face in confusion, pulled at my hair in agony, slumped in my seat with dejection, or clenched my fists in triumph more in any other movie.
The first 30 minutes introduced nearly every main cat possible, each one belting their own introductory song. It was a frantic mess that seemed to stretch on for a few years, give or take. When I realized it wasn’t even halfway through the movie, I had a physically nauseous reaction.
If this film’s main goal was to unsettle, they completed it with grace and ease. The jerking and other-worldly movements of the cats, who are real actors with CGI fur, tails, and ears, consistently seems out of place, while also being the only movement we see for the entire duration, leading to an uncanny-valley Stockholm syndrome. After a few solos, you become swallowed into the world of Cats: where despite the fact that their feet phase through the floor when they dance, that their collars appear to be copy-pasted into the film, or even that one of the cats eats sentient, anthropomorphic cockroaches, it becomes your life.
Cats has a star-studded cast, including Jason Derulo and Judi Dench, who seemingly were all told they were acting in a different movie. Jennifer Hudson, with her heart-wrenching portrayal of the shunned Grizabella, seems to believe she is in an Oscar-fodder drama. James Corden and Rebel Wilson, playing Bustopher Jones and Jennyanydots, seem to think they’re doing a bit of improvisation for The Late Late Show. Francesca Hayward as Victoria appears to play a doe-eyed submissive in a 21st-century commentary on sexuality and the modern-man. Idris Elba as Macavity doesn’t seem to know what movie he wants to be in—an angsty drama or a juvenile superhero flick.
The only two actors who seemed to truly understand Cats, with its many virtues and vices, are Ian McKellen, the English Oscar-nominated actor, who portrays Gus the Theatre Cat, and the 10-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift, who plays Bombalurina. McKellen, with his trembling hands (and really, I mean hands, the CGI catsuits rarely extend to the actors’ appendages) and greying whiskers, gives a captivating monologue that remains the best of the cats’ introductions, despite it simply being a lone man waxing poetic on a rundown stage.
Swift as well, from the moment her Mary-Jane heeled foot enters the scene as she descends on a half-moon theatre prop, absolutely nails the performance. She is every bit the sex-appeal of the kitten playing kink and her unedited voice holds a raw intoxication as she sprinkles the other cats with glowing catnip. In a scene where Idris Elba kidnaps some of their fellows, Swift gives a more stunning and nuanced performance than half the cast, as her gaze absolutely sears Elba, her face capturing the moment she sees the world go from playful villainy to scarring malevolence.
At the beginning of the film, I asked myself a question–what is a Jellicle Cat? And by the end, I still had no answer. A Jellicle Cat is a magical, unexplainable beast, and where the Cats movie fails in its pitiful graphics, horrendous plot-line and disgusting plot-holes, it fulfills itself with the whimsy of its music by keeping you smiling all night long in the same way magic mushrooms would.
Cats is not only about cats. It is a rough-and-tumble dive into BDSM, sexual revelation, humanity, the importance of memory and the feline persona. It is a haunting film, and in the same way Macavity disappears into a haze of poorly animated glitter-smoke, Cats whispers one word–ineffable.
Featured screenshot provided by IMDB.
