Whatever one might say about Tom Hooper’s inexplicable new movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “longest running Broadway musical” and 7-time Tony winner Cats—and there will be much said—it’s an undeniable vision. A misguided one, sure, but who honestly thought this was a good idea?
Where to start? For beginners, Lloyd Webber’s 1981 musical was probably never something meant to transcend the stage, always requiring a leap of faith to embrace its flamboyantly human/feline conceits. Who didn’t enjoy its extravagantly coiffed and furred actors prancing and purring about the theater’s darkened aisles, sometimes perched upon the arm of your aisle seat? I know I did, and twice.
But presenting this theatrical novelty on the big screen, in close-up amplifies where the show’s problems have always been, beginning with its book and score, a feather-light and mostly non-melodious (and often meandering and discordant) chore, at least to my ear. Simply put, the music—a sort of revue of styles and genres to suit the cats’ personalities—isn’t very engaging, but for a few upbeat, second act saves.
It doesn’t help that Cats, in any form, has precious little substance, a strung together series of cutesy vignettes based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. A threadbare tale of “Jellicle” (whatever that means) London alley cats, most of whom have seen better days, each hoping to be selected for an annual ritual of rebirth, it’s a movie sure to engender three reactions—bewilderment, dropped jaws and certain walkouts. It’s the kind of ambitious misfire only very talented people can make when fully committed to something that no one stopped to consider whether they should be doing.
Comprised of unimaginative production numbers, bargain-looking sets and an aridly self-conscious, suffocating CGI netherworld, Hooper’s movie registers as little more than a filmed play mounted with successively gauche set pieces and lackluster staging. At one point, a character sings an entire coda looking directly down the camera lens. It certainly isn’t, for one minute, cinematic.
Picture opens as abandoned kitten Victoria (Royal Ballet star Francesca Hayward, spritely) is dumped in an alley before quickly being embraced by a group of other disenfranchised cats, who emerge from their Trafalgar Square hiding places to take her in, show her the ropes and basically perform a series of numbers tailored to their personas, habits and histories.
There’s zaftig lay about Jenny Any Dots (Rebel Wilson, vamping it up), gobbling up roaches and training musical mice; smoothly tuxedoed, would-be gentleman Bustopher Jones (James Corden); up-to-no-good McCavity (Idris Elba), a mischief-maker with mysterious powers; Gus the Theatre Cat (Ian McKellen), a pioneering former stage prop; gyrating ladies’ man Rum Tum Tugger (Jason DeRulo, fun); Skimbleshanks (Steven McCrae), one-time watchful eye on the local train line; down-on-his-luck magician Mr. Mistoffeles (Laurie Davidson); and of course, the show’s most famous character, former West End legend and grand dame Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson, phenomenal), shuffling about on her last legs, a beaten down vagrant haunting the alleyways and docks in a haze of former glory and regret. And there’s about a half-dozen more, if you’re keeping track.
The aged sage of the group, Old Deuteronomy, played by Judi Dench with a wobbly singing voice but lived-in gravitas, has the power to transport one from the group to the “Heaviside Layer,” a sort of cat heaven where a new life will be granted. Of course, every cat wants to be the chosen one, and much of the movie revolves around individual pleas to be such.
Lending pop star power is Taylor Swift, who turns up as a slinky chanteuse-like Bombalurina, and in truth isn’t half-bad. She’s also co-written (with Lloyd Webber) a haunting original song, Beautiful Ghosts, performed in narrative by Victoria, and also by Swift on the picture’s closing credits.
Unsurprisingly, Jennifer Hudson steals this show (as did West End’s Elaine Paige and Broadway’s Betty Buckley before her) since she’s been handed the show’s one great song, “Memory,” reminding us of her powerful acting through music in her Oscar-winning 2008 Dreamgirls performance.
Through her own distinctive inflections and intonations, Hudson makes the enduring, shopworn chestnut wholly her own, and believably tragic, as she cries human tears. In this undeniably moving sequence she demands we snap to full attention (which at this point for most viewers will have long since waned) turning the film’s climactic scene into something transcendent. She’s that good, and while she can’t save the movie, she at least makes you wish everything else in Cats had as much substance.
The show’s two other solid songs—”Skimbleshanks, the Railway Cat” and “Gus: The Theater Cat”—prove, at best, passable here.
While a critical pile-on to this misfire would not be unwarranted, it would be unfair to say that as a movie, Cats doesn’t have it moments. Yet, who is this movie for? Adults will likely find the combination of make-up and CGI both bizarre and boring; children will quickly lose interest.
The picture’s musical and narrative shortfalls are undeniable, but Hooper’s major miscalculation, and one that tanks the picture, is one of peculiar make-up and CGI actor enhancements, often surreal and nearly always perplexing, proving nearly nearly fatal. We simply cannot get over the artifice and fully embrace the actors (“Who is that under the make-up?”) in their cat suits (some of which look off the rack from a costume shop), visages polished off with post-production smoothing and healthy supplements of digital fur. Never mind that they possess human hands and feet (and I noticed at least one ring upon a “finger”). One wonders if an animated, or “photo realistic” version (like this year’s The Lion King) might have been the way to go.
Yet despite its wacky aesthetic, unorthodox use of CGI and stiflingly on-the-nose treatment, the simple fact is that Cats is a show which, at its core, is primarily about dance, not music. Its score simply isn’t good enough to carry a 100-minute movie. In 1981, onstage, it was plenty sufficient to produce a conceptually novel, leisurely enjoyment.
In 2019, however, it all seems so of its time. I’m afraid that today our standards—and maybe more importantly, our cynicism—are much higher. In a world where transformative musicals like Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Come from Away and Fun Home are de rigueur, mere spectacle and silliness doesn’t quite cut it as it once did.
2 stars.
