Cats - The Movie

Just back. The critics have been overly harsh I feel. It was enjoyable as a film but I can see that people who aren't fond of or haven't seen the stage show will wonder what on earth is going on.

Jellicle Ball especially a major disappointment though. I wanted to see more of the dancing.

Robbie Fairchild was a standout, and the Skimbleshanks number too.

The Irishmen is the most critically acclaimed film of the year and I thought it was quite possibly the single most boring film I have ever seen. There wasn't a single likeable character in it. I didn't care what happened to any of them. It took them 3 and a half hours to tell a story they could've easily told in 90 minutes x

You like making bold sweeping hypothetical statements without anything to back them up don’t you?! Especially to end your posts.

‘If this was a film where the cats looked exactly the same but were all running around with machine guns shooting each other, their appearance would not be a problem I'm sure...’

‘If they didn't look the way they do ie a slightly updated version of the originals, there would've probably been an even bigger hissyfit.’ Or there might not have been at all.

Explain anywhere you see ‘distress.’ Then again, why let facts get in the way of hyperbole?

OK, the Cats have finally arrived in Germany and luckily I live in a civilized place that manages to offer the original version, so here are my two Eurocents. Lots of spoilers ahead...


I liked it... quite a lot and certainly way more than I expected. The "look" of the cats stopped bothering me within two minutes (although I did wish they had let the performers wear slippers to cover up the human feet). I loved the setting of a nocturnal old-fashioned London and while Beautiful Ghosts as a song certainly doesn't rank among ALWs finest, it fits perfectly where it is. I loved the connection between Victoria and Grizabella, who couldn't be more different but still shared the same fate of being rejected, Victoria by her human owner, Grizabella by her tribe.

But there were a few issues for me. One that I'll file under "meh" is the Macavity subplot. It makes little sense and why did Idris Elba as the only performer have to wear those naff green contact lenses? All the same, I can to some extent understand the thought of wanting to have more of a plot... it was just daftly conceived.

The first thing that really bugged me were some directional choices, most notably for Memory. The whole song plays with outdoor imaginery - the moonlight, the dawn, etc - it really shouldn't take place inside the old theatre but out there under the moonlight, with the dawn only just breaking in the distance. Others have already mentioned the bizarre decision to include Jennifer Hudson's snot and to some extent she was too melodramatic for my liking but I understand it must be an incredible task to do something fresh with a song done to death like this one. And for my money, it still blows virtually everything that's been written in the last ten-fifteen years out of the water.

Other songs were wasted opportunities, too. When the cats all move out onto the railways and into the sleeping car during Skimbleshanks, their world suddenly opens up so much and it's such a fun number to watch. The worst ones for me were Gus and Mistoffelees. Ian McKellen, bless him, isn't much of a singer, which is fine, but in the stage version this song is mostly carried by whoever plays/sings Jellylorum. Without her, it gets rather dull fast. The direction could have done so much here that isn't possible live in the theatre - have Gus "see" his former grand roles in his mind, bring the theatre alive again for a few moments, stuff like that. Completely wasted. Similarly Mr Mistoffelees, who, in the show, is a self-assured charmer, why make him such an insecure awkward cat here and why oh why didn't he dance?

Which brings me to the main problem: The dancing. Gillian Lynne created nothing short of a miracle with the Cats choreography, translating feline moves for human dancers. The new choreography did nothing of the sort. I got the sense that Blankenbuehler tried for a more contemporary "street" style of dancing but... that's not the magic of Cats, the incredible grace of real cats translated to dance. And so many songs were wasted, beginning with "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" and finding its nadir in the Jellicle Ball, where so little of the stunning ensemble choreography with all the cats moving in sync has been lost. Other wasted opportunities, too, like the aforementioned Mistoffelees or the Gumbie Cat - when all the cockroaches appeared on the table and on that cake, I expected for a brief moment some grand Busby Berkeley-style number, but it just fizzled out.

And well, to me the dancing was always the highlight of the show - you could move past the thin plot and the weaker numbers, but you can't fail to be in awe of the dancers' talents and Francesca Hayward aside, far too little was on show here. So on the whole... I did enjoy it. I will certainly watch it again when the DVD comes out and I don't think it deserves some of the ridicule and bile it's beein receiving. At the same time... lots of wasted opportunities, so I can also understand why it fails to impress, especially people who don't know the stage show.


PS: Bad Audience Behaviour of the Day: Some Taylor Swift fan (presumably) blithely filming the whole of her Macavity number on her phone.

It may, but there's nothing there lol

I would have said no, but my bf hates the show and, much to my surprise, enjoyed the film!

Well I am going to go against the grain as say that I really enjoyed the film.
The last time I saw Cats was on stage with the original cast back around the time of the 1st world war.
Thought it sounded absolutely glorious especially the Jellicoe Ball which is one of my top 10 favourite tunes.
Just a couple of minor gripes like the mice not being in proportion to the cats size wise and the cameras filming more of the cats faces and upper bodies during the big dance scenes.
Thought Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, and Steven McRae (who I had to look up) were brilliant and I even liked James Corden being himself. Slightly disappointed with Rebel Wilson who wasn't as good as she usually is. However the best bit of all was Robert Fairchild (is he now called Robbie?) who is a favourite of mine, and although he didn't have his own song, was in practically every scene so a big plus there.
I've given it a 4 stars.
2 people walked out after about 20 mins but I think they were actually at the wrong film as they looked more action adventure than musical theatre types and 2 people walked in during the opening number and proceeded to turn on their spotlight on their phone to find their seat and stand in the aisle talking about what row they should be sitting in very loudly. For pity sake, there are about 3 hours of adverts and trailers before a film starts so no excuse for being there on time.
We also got a trailer for Blyth Spirit with Judi Dench which looks marvellous.

Has ALW made any comment of late? He seems unusually low-profile.

I was thinking about the soundtrack - and if it is taken directly from the screen version, it will sound very odd - the way they brought out certain voices in the mix when they were closer to the camera makes perfect sense in a visual presentation - but to just listen to it that way, it would be very, very disconcerting.

Thanks, I think she means the full score rather than the highlights? Not sure.