"Where the hell are the singing Cats?" 1993, David Letterman's first episode on CBS. Twenty-six and a half years ago, Cats was such an astonishingly common reference point in the American carnival that David Letterman could use Paul Newman to pull off an astonishing comic bait-and-switch in an extremely crucial episode for him, and everybody in America knew that 'the Singing Cats' was talking about this infected zit on the lip of Broadway that's run for nearly forty years...
Why was Cats a mega-hit? I have no idea except to say that it was sprinkled with that magic dust with which Andrew Lloyd Webber sparked his astonishing run of success. At the heart of Webber's musical talent, if it can be said to have one, is a real melodic gift. There's no question, his shows are proscenium slope-to-slope packed with tunes, are they great tunes? Well, it probably depends on whom you ask. I wouldn't say so, but even so, it's a real gift. Ask any composer how easy it is to come up with a melody, they don't grow on trees for most of us. But even if these are real melodies and astonishingly progenitive, they are so maddeningly catchy because they're not exactly complex melodies. They are so easy to remember that they're grating. Compare one of the most memorable tunes of Andrew Lloyd Webber (up to 0:40), it's the definition of four-square, eight completely symmetrical bars, the harmonies are just as predictable, not a surprise anywhere to be found. You'll find the same predictability in Close Every Door to Me or Don't Cry for Me Argentina. Now compare it with probably the most famous melody of his contemporary, Paul McCartney. A seven bar asymetrical melody, preceded by a three bar introduction, with chromatic walking bass line, and then the intrusion of a string quartet. When it comes to musical creativity, this is the real thing, Andrew Lloyd Webber is extremely competent at what he does. Is it artistically creative? Well... not really. It's generic purveyance of maddeningly catchy earworms with electronic scores and simple syncopations that sound uncannily like soft rock, Fleetwood Mac, Hall & Oates, Phil Collins, and yes, Billy Fucking Joel. Rock music completely defanged of its subversion, mass marketed and pastiched for an audience who thinks that everything in the world is just fine. The absence of musical content tarted up with literally millions of dollars strewn about the stage. The Broadway truism of the time was that you went home from Andrew Lloyd Webber shows singing the scenery. The true genius of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals was not Webber or his lyricist Tim Rice, it was producers like Cameron Mackintosh and Bill Kenright, who perceived within the mindnumping catchiness of Webber's melodies a blank slate on which they could mount an unpredictable theater experience that is truly cinematic, with music and lyrics that are just barely good enough to support such high concept theatrical machines without drawing attention to themselves. It's also precisely what made Michael Jackson and Madonna, the true genius in their songs is not the songs but the videos which accompanied their release, and what you're remembering in their songs is not just the music itself, but the recall of the entire visual production. And so successful was this deceptive formula that after a not entirely successful run of shows that included Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita, the Webber juggernaut realized that so based was their formula on production design that they could literally make a review show about cats with no plot whatsoever, and it would be a bigger hit than West Side Story or Gypsy.
To be an unassailable success, production, not substance, is what it took to distinguish oneself artistically in late 20th century Anglophonia. Here's the first two paragraphs of Frank Rich's 1982 review, back when nobody knew he had a political thought in his head, and he was merely the New York Times' theater critic, known as 'The Butcher of Broadway.' And yet butcher Cats he didn't really. Quote:
'...Rarely exists in the theater... 'why is that? Because theater is not movies, and most attempts to make theater to look realistically high concept is a disaster. Obviously there are exceptions. But would it add anything to the experience if we the storm in King Lear had real water and we felt the wind blow? When the statue in Don Giovanni sends the titular antagonist to hell, would it really be any more frightening if we saw hell? The music in Don Giovanni already does such heavy lifting, all the stage needs to make it work is a trap door! Sweeney Todd's had a whole series huge, grandly operatic productions, but I can't imagine any Sweeney Todd was more devastating than the one I saw in London, 2004, which took place in a theater barely the size of a small lecture hall, every singer played an instrument to accompany the other singers, and the staging was as abstract as it is in any Greek drama. Theater as the long tradition of poetics always understood it has its roots as a religious rite for the worship of the Greek gods, and its synergy comes from the faith it generates within the audience that we are conjuring a different reality through incredibly false means. It was a much more complex vision of worship than much of what we have in today's monotheism, but that transubtantiation is at the essence of so many of the most basic religious rites, not just in the obvious - the Catholic Eucharist or Communion, but in any nearly element of Jewish Passover Seder which asks its participants to do nothing less than transcend time to partake in ancient acts of Jewish history through religious symbols, or even in the Islamic prohibition of images of the Prophet or Allah. In all three religions, the issue at stake is the belief that the most banal material can very easily become transcendent. It's all pure theater, but theater, good theater, and there's no better theater than religion, is very very real to the people convinced to believe in it. All of this partakes of the same process that Catholics call transubstantiation in which what was a moment ago completely terrestrial and humdrum becomes divine and of a different world.THERE'S a reason why ''Cats,''... is likely to lurk around Broadway for a long time - and it may not be the one you expect.It's not that this collection of anthropomorphic variety turns is a brilliant musical or that it powerfully stirs the emotions or that it has an idea in its head. Nor is the probable appeal of ''Cats'' a function of the publicity that has accompanied the show's every purr since it first stalked London 17 months ago. No, the reason why people will hunger to see ''Cats'' is far more simple and primal than that: it's a musical that transports the audience into a complete fantasy world that could only exist in the theater and yet, these days, only rarely does. Whatever the other failings and excesses, even banalities, of ''Cats,'' it believes in purely theatrical magic, and on that faith it unquestionably delivers.
But movies have their roots in science, the manipulation of light, which was once thought divine, by electricity, the forces of the divine given measurable scientific form. Movies are already take place in a fake space, so on a movie screen, the more they can convince us the effects are real, the more vivid our experience. Movies can take us to faraway fantasy lands, but admittedly with a lot of exceptions, particularly in movies early days, the fantasy must look plausible. If the space effects in Star Wars and the alternate universe of Lord of the Rings looked implausible, we would laugh at them. If the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park and the Terminator did not move as though they could jump out of the screen, we would never be scared. And if the violence in The Godfather or Raging Bull or Schindler's List looked fake, we would never remember these movies. Imagine a fake looking desert in Lawrence of Arabia or The Searchers, imagine a Psycho that isn't cut quickly enough between shots to hide the fact that you don't see the knife going in. The effects in movies are so little unless we believe we've actually seen the real thing.
But the realness of theater is right in front you, you need fantasy for theater to work, and for better or worse, nothing exists more in the land of the imagination than singing cats... I've never seen the show live, I can't imagine I'd like it much, but I completely understand why people do. Theater needs us to suspend disbelief, and nothing makes us acclimate to the suspension of disbelief so quickly as... (Jellicle Ball... to 1:15)
But even a show that's good theater doesn't have to be anywhere near this stupid. How the fuck did a show this dumb ever sustain the cash flow year after year of a small country? The answer is that the economics of theater, the economics of America itself, demanded mega-production on a scale unextant before the oil crisis of 1973. In a balanced national economy, during a period when the world was so imbalanced that America controlled more than 50% of the world's GDP and a large American middle class was unassailably secure, it was very easy to make productions of middling expense, a success would make a medium amount of money, a failure would lose a medium amount of money, and whether the play ran for a week or a year, you would simply move onto the next show. But by the mid-70s, all that was over, and shows which failed stood to lose so much money that you had to bet everything on every show, because as always in the arts, some shows are guar,anteed to fail, and therefore every success must recoup the costs of the failures. Even Andrew Lloyd Webber had two failures during the 70s when it seemed as though he could do no wrong! Therefore, these enormous investments require concepts that keep these millions of dollars as absolutely safe as can be. So rather than tell any number of astonishingly subversive stories, we get a musical about: (Mr. Mistophelees up to 2:13)
Cats is still on Broadway, thirty-eight years into its run, but as a whole, the world basically forgot about Cats, and there is so... little... reason... to remember it! Cats was a product of 1980, everything about it is bad David Bowie. The score is B-level synth pop, the costumes Ziggy Stardust with fur. It has no discernible plot, no discernible character development, virtually every song is based on an introduction to a different cat, and practically every cat is based on a cat pun (extra points if you get the pun in that sentence...). THAT IS THE ENTIRETY OF THE SHOW! IT IS LITERALLY A SHOW ABOUT CAT PUNS, AND IT'S RUN FOR NEARLY FORTY YEARS!
So yes, I saw Cats four times. Why? Because it's there! It is far and away my favorite movie this year. No movie this year was as good as Cats was bad! It is a failure of genius, it took the most astonishing artistic risks and failed at every... single... one of them. I have also failed to see Cats twice. One time the movie had so many technical gliches that i took it as a sign it was bad juju to see such a terrible movie again, and I walked out. I then went to the theater to see it another four times.
I was also thrown out of another showing.... my second that day. You heard both halves of that sentence correctly.... What happened was that I snuck a computer into Cats earlier that to take notes because, obviously, after all this, I had to do a podcast on Cats. I snuck the computer in again tonight to take more notes on whatever I had missed the first time, and considering that most of the last viewing was spent looking at my computer, it's highly likely that there was more to find out. So I go back late that night, and everything goes according to plan, no computer check even though I'd gotten so cocky that it's not even a bag, I just tucked it under the flap of my coat. I go into the theater, and of course a weekday 10:30 showing of a flop is utterly empty. But then, I realize, oh shit, I forgot to open the file on google where my notes are, and there's no wifi. So unless I want to take notes on my phone where the keyboard is of course extremely small, I have to go outside and ask them if there's wifi and hope that they have a sense of humor and pity. There are three at the desk, and two of them looked like they'd have been cool with it, but one of them is clearly more a stickler than the others, takes one look at me and doesn't let me go back in unless I give him the computer:
so I say: If I can't take my computer, I'm not seeing this movie, it's Cats!
he says: But this is the movie you came for!
I say I came to take notes on the movie!
Him: Why? Are you a reviewer?
... ... ... um ... yes ....
...Let me call the manager' says he.
he says: But this is the movie you came for!
I say I came to take notes on the movie!
Him: Why? Are you a reviewer?
... ... ... um ... yes ....
...Let me call the manager' says he.
(he calls the manager, the manager comes)
Manager say: It doesn't matter whether or not he says he's a reviewer, he might be here to record the movie illegally.
It's CATS!!!
You might distract people with your typing and the light.
(beat) I'm the only person in the theater. IT'S CATS!!!!!!!!!
Manager: I'm sorry. The studio is very clear on this.
Me: Well, I'm here to write about it. If I can't write about it, there's no point in seeing the movie. You owe me a free pass.
he goes 'Alright...' and dejectedly gives me a free pass...
It's CATS!!!
You might distract people with your typing and the light.
(beat) I'm the only person in the theater. IT'S CATS!!!!!!!!!
Manager: I'm sorry. The studio is very clear on this.
Me: Well, I'm here to write about it. If I can't write about it, there's no point in seeing the movie. You owe me a free pass.
he goes 'Alright...' and dejectedly gives me a free pass...
So I managed to stifle it until I got inside the car, but from the moment I got in I cry-laughed like Jack Nicholson's Joker for twenty minutes, and I still feel dizzy from the lack of control over my lungs.after six times in the theater I even feel like I've memorized the trailors.
I also stayed routinely to count the credits, because the sheer amount of talent, skill, and love that went into this movie is on the same level as the Wizard of Oz. This is a perfect movie, it gets everything wrong. It takes the most astonishingly large artistic risks and fails at every single one of them! And like a great movie, its failure completely rewards repeat viewings. Any great work of art is self-renewing, every time you see it, you find new meanings, and every time I've seen Cats, I've found new ways in which this movie is risible.
Cats: the movie, cost NINETY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS! Eighteen prop dressers, twelve model drawers, five third assistant sound editors, five shooting electricians, six rigging electricians, six more electrical riggers, ten costume standbys, six seamstress, eight hair and makeup artists, seven set pa's, three dialect coaches, three unit medics, at least seven assistant directors, four physiotherapists, four conductors, six orchestrators, eight digital animators, five visual effects producers, fice visual effects coordinators, Eric Fellner, whoever he is, has four assustants, five animation supervisors, twelve animation supervisors, twelve effects production managers, a couple hundred digital artists with twelve department heads, and roughly a hundred forty other special effects artists. And literally at least a thousand or many more visual effects supervisors. There's even a cat movement speiualist! And all of this for a musical about cat puns!
I could take us through every song in this musical and show how stupid it is, but what of the movie itself?
Cats: the movie, cost NINETY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS! Eighteen prop dressers, twelve model drawers, five third assistant sound editors, five shooting electricians, six rigging electricians, six more electrical riggers, ten costume standbys, six seamstress, eight hair and makeup artists, seven set pa's, three dialect coaches, three unit medics, at least seven assistant directors, four physiotherapists, four conductors, six orchestrators, eight digital animators, five visual effects producers, fice visual effects coordinators, Eric Fellner, whoever he is, has four assustants, five animation supervisors, twelve animation supervisors, twelve effects production managers, a couple hundred digital artists with twelve department heads, and roughly a hundred forty other special effects artists. And literally at least a thousand or many more visual effects supervisors. There's even a cat movement speiualist! And all of this for a musical about cat puns!
I could take us through every song in this musical and show how stupid it is, but what of the movie itself?
The problems start at the very beginning of the movie. of course. An eighties synthesizer score clashing against extremely interwar Art Deco set design. The eighties synth is breathtakingly ugly. Over and over again, has one of those THX 1138 effects that announce 'the audience is listening'. I suppose it's supposed to remind us of caterwauling, but that would at least make sense, and it happens at all the most inopportune moments. Including in Memories, imagine, whatever you think of the song, it's one of the most iconic music theater songs of the 20th century, sung in a great performance and interrupted more than half a dozen times by (the audience is listening effect). Anthropomorphic cats, stripped of their David Bowie costumes and Cirque du Soleil sets, exist in a setting that appears to demonstrate them discarded pets of Evelyn Waugh. The cats are all naked with fur that looks more like skin grafted on than any kind of fur, except for the cats who wear shoes! Many male cats have bulges in wide frame that disappear in close up. The female cats, most notably Taylor Swift, clearly have nipples in wide frame but the nipples disappear from close up. Which of course begs the questionWHY DO ALL THE CATS HAVE ONLY TWO NIPPLES?!?!?!
The one human we see in the entire movie is at the very beginning, which is more I think than we ever see in the show, so this ruins any suspension of disbelief that this world might be meant for Cats and not for humans. And yet, just as in the show, every set is clearly designed as a Cat-world in which literally every building is a Cat pun. The Egyptian theater with images of Cats over the facade, a bar that seems to serve nothing but milk on a plate, Is this a world where Cats are worshipped? Is this anthropomorsis part of a symbiotic world where Cats are basically human equals? Is it set post-nuclear apocalypse where there are barely any humans and Cats have mutated into intelligent beings who have a language of song-and-dance and collective speak - not to mention mice and cockroaches have done the same, more on them later...? Or is this
The introductory song is clearly supposed to be addressed to the audience, and sets up that Cats is basically a review show in which the audience is a direct participant. But instead, it's addressed to an newly created protagonist for the movie, completely unseen by the show - a cat named Victoria, played by an incredibly talented and beautiful actress named Francesca Hayward who will always be remembered by the world as the star of Cats so we will never hear from her again while James Corden continues his ubiquitous appearances in everything without so much of a scratch to his mystifying career. So this obviously begs a number of questions. Do they do this musical song and dance for every cat who passes by? Is it a way of enticing them to join the Jellicle gang? Is it a way of scaring them off? Is it a way of showing their plumage and assessing potential new members? And even if it isn't all that, won't they be they be seen by humans in what's clearly a human city who will continuously exclaim HOLY SHIT! SINGING CATS!!! Also, these are the Jellicle cats' and after hearing that word literally three-hundred times over the course of the movie and now probably a thousand times over the course of three viewings, I still have one overriding question: WHAT THE FUCK IS A JELLICLE!?!
And fuck is a very important concept in this movie. All the cats look as though they're about to fuck each other, and I do mean all of them. The young ones look just as likely to fuck Judy Dench or Ian McKellen as more age appropriate ones. There are moments when all the cats start a group incantation of spiken word lyrics that sounds like the prelude to the orgy in Eyes Wide Shut.
But if all of these cats are so confident and full of braggadocio, why then do they run off so immediately and cowardly when the villain, McCavity, appears. What is the nature of McCavity's villainy? It's never established. Is he a drug dealer? Is he a mafia don? Does he mean to send fish in the mail for every cat he kills,... or does he eat the fish? Well, apparently he does have a magic dust that makes himself and other cats disappear. It's never established how he can do this or why he does it, or why he affixes some sort of magic tag on his disapparations, like 'INEFFABLE!' 'MEOW!' 'MCCAVITYYYY!'. But McCavity is played by the great Idris Elba, STRINGER BELL FROM THE WIRE! It was highly presumed that Idris Elba would soon be the first black James Bond. Instead, he is this... and it is so much better, aside from being the first black James Bond, Idris Elba would eventually just be another Bond in a role defined for all time by Sean Connery, but now he is the least threatening, least coherent villain in modern movie history.
But the reason we need to know about cat names is that the entire musical is made up of cats introducing their names. That's the whole fucking musical...
The introductions truly begin with Rebel Wilson as Jenny Any-dots. How do we BEGIN to talk about this: she uses her tail as a microphone, except that the first time she uses a tail for a microphone, she's clearly using the tail of a different cat who's never seen. Or maybe she's a mass murderer cat who collects tails the way the Judge collects scalps in Blood Meridian or Buffalo Bill collects skin in Silence of the Lambs! There's even plenty of evidence that she's a psychopath! She unzips her fur only to have another coat of fur underneath her fur, did she literally skin another cat!?!?! She then sings her number with singing mice with human faces that are clearly children but who also have human hands. And then she displays her army of scaled down cockroaches that she's trained to be a a busby berkeley chorus line , a few of which she eats during the production, and so cowed are the cockroaches that none of them recoil in horror but imperviously maintain their march formation! And this is, somehow, considered a charming number.
Then there's the Rum Tum Tugger song, sold by Jason Derulo with the maximum sex appeal a man can give while dressed in a cat suit. Jason Derulo is a decent looking man, but not even young Brando could sell a mid-song admiring look and comment on himself in the mirror while dressed like a cat. The female cats fawn on him as though he could go to bed with four of them at a time, but that's probably inadvisable, because apparently Mr. Derulo's natural bulge was so visible through the costume that the CGI department had him neutered... there's should be a bulge there's nothing but a curve....
This movie shows just how sad Jennifer Hudson is not by recounting any of her backstory, really ever, except that she once had a couple dates with McCavity. Everybody has romantic regrets... but rather than demonstrate more about why Grizabella the glamor cat is a Jellicle outcast, this movie develops an extreme fixation on Jennifer Hudson's snot; lovingly trickling down her feline brail lips. God bless this performer, she sings her huge feline heart out. It might be an amazing performance, except that then you realize that she's singing this with fur and cat ears and whiskers and who could EVER take this seriously?
There is not a single cat pun that Cats misses. It literally must have been a month of brainstorming. It also has James Cordon eating from the trash like George Costanza, and getting hit in the balls multiple times, as though they knew that we wouldn't find the first two times he gets hit in the balls funny and tries to land a single physical gag. And between Rebel Wilson and James Corden, there is every conceivable unfunny improvised catpun of dialogue and unfunny pratfall. Three times, James Corden throws up from overeating and it's considered part of his charm. At one point there's a bottle of champagne poured into his mouth and yet the champagne stops right before it hits his mouth.
There's the twin cat burglar cats, Mongo Jerry, and Rumble Teasrer. Chaotic neutral characters who go to the dinner table and literally keep smearing their assholes on the plates.
And then we see precisely where Idris Elba kidnaps all the cats to, a barge in the middle of the Thames river. Why there? Who the fuck knows. We just go with it. Ray Winstone plays his henchman, Growltiger, a great and underrated actor who deserves so much better than his only song to be interrupted by more James Corden gags.
Setups exist all through the movie like 'Who is this character?' Followed by the song. There are all kinds of group incantation of poetic verse, because apparently cats exist in a hive mind. And somehow the outsider cat Victoria knows the words to the incantations in spite of the fact that SHE'S NEVER MET ANY OF THEM! And though each cat has three individual names they chant the verse of the cat's three names as though they are a single, beehive-or-borg-like entity. Listen to this for just a moment (up to 0:24) IF THEY'RE CHANTING AS A GROUP WHY DO THEY REFER TO THEMSELVES AS 'I'?!?!?!?!?
And then there is poor Judy Dench, playing what seems to be the Prime Minister of the Jellicle Cats, Old Deuteronomy, who is introduced in a song whose rhymes do not entirely rhyme, and one can't quite blame Tim Rice for this one because he was stuck with the impossible challenge of rhyming with Deuteronomy. And then Some more chamts, which exist while we find Ian McKellen hamming his inner cat, he's sometimes in group shots, sometimes not, depending on which days they could afford him, and intoning in his most thespianly voice: Meow Meow MEOOOOWWWWW!
And then there is the Jellicle ball, when the Jellicle moon so puts every cat in a pagan trance that they dance a Feline Rite of Spring, except that the music is Andrew Lloyd Webber synth. At the end of it, there would naturally be applause in a theater. But in film, we only hear the winded breath of the dancers, who sound like they've all partaken of yet another exhausting orgy. It was so vivid I swear I could smell the 'Bee O' in the theater.
And now we get to Ian McKellen's song, as Gus, the theater cat. Even more than Dame Judy, Sir Ian clearly takes this very, very, very seriously. And bless him, the greatest King Lear I ever expect to see makes all kinds of thespian meows and purrs and caterwauls, he even laps water out of a bowl with his tongue while standing on two legs. Outside of the song, half his lines in this movie are so overacted that they cant be understood. But the great moment is right at the end, the moment of this movie that truly made me cry-laugh. The cats so appreciate McKellan's performance that they don't cheer with applause or bravos or even woos, a hundred cats all wail rawaawawwwwrr! That is the moment when I realized I wasn't just seeing a typical terrible movie. This is a once in a generation movie, the kind of failure that can only be made by geniuses.
And then comes Skimbelshank the railway cat, and in some ways it's the best of all the numbers, frenetic as a train, actual momentum, relatively clever lyrics, even a relatively complex rhythm in the bridge the only problem is that when the Cats come to the railroad, they are suddenly one-third their size, no larger than rats in relation to the rails.
And finally, we come to Taylor Swift, the alleged star of the show if billing was to be believed. Reclining in a chez longe made to look like a golden moon, and sprinkling what is literally exploding cat nip on the other cats! Who are literally tranced and brainwashed into temporarily becoming Taylor Swift dancers. She sings not of herself, but of McCavity, who somehow does not have much song of his. If we never learn who McCavity is, what hope have we to learn who T-Swift is either?
We then get to the weenie or MacGuffin of the whole thing. McCavity has been kidnapping all the other competing cats so that he will win the Jellicle Ball, some criminal mastermind this guy is... The annual Jellicle Ball determines which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer. What is the Heaviside Layer you ask?..... Don't... And when Old Deuteronomy doesn't choose McCavity, he kidnaps her to the same barge where all the other singing cats are and marks her walk the plank...
And yet, a full five minutes later, when it comes time for Magical Mr. Mestopheles to apparat her back, she is still alive and not even wet, she clearly finagled her way out of walking the plank, but we never find out how. Magical Mr. Mespheles is apparently clever enough to transport cats from the middle of the Themes to somewhere around Leicester Square, but is he clever enough to effect bodily resurrection from afar? Not to mention that over the course of the song Mr. Mestopheles sings about how he's black from the top of his ears to the tip of his tail, and all the while he is clearly MOSTLY WHITE! Not to mention the problems of continuity shots - there's one shot where a Cat is holding a hat in her hand, only to cut to a side shot where she's holding the hat in her mouth. Not to mention yet again the issue of Jason Derulo's musical hamminess. While everybody is singing "Oh, well I never was there ever, a cat so clever as Magical Mr. Mestopheles," he literally goes on his own falsetto solo in the middle of a unison chorus... And after the reappearance of Old Deuteronomy, Mr. Mestophelees literally makes all the cards and instruments and flowers in the room float through the air as he flies. This is the movie's moment of triumph...
And yet, a full five minutes later, when it comes time for Magical Mr. Mestopheles to apparat her back, she is still alive and not even wet, she clearly finagled her way out of walking the plank, but we never find out how. Magical Mr. Mespheles is apparently clever enough to transport cats from the middle of the Themes to somewhere around Leicester Square, but is he clever enough to effect bodily resurrection from afar? Not to mention that over the course of the song Mr. Mestopheles sings about how he's black from the top of his ears to the tip of his tail, and all the while he is clearly MOSTLY WHITE! Not to mention the problems of continuity shots - there's one shot where a Cat is holding a hat in her hand, only to cut to a side shot where she's holding the hat in her mouth. Not to mention yet again the issue of Jason Derulo's musical hamminess. While everybody is singing "Oh, well I never was there ever, a cat so clever as Magical Mr. Mestopheles," he literally goes on his own falsetto solo in the middle of a unison chorus... And after the reappearance of Old Deuteronomy, Mr. Mestophelees literally makes all the cards and instruments and flowers in the room float through the air as he flies. This is the movie's moment of triumph...
And finally, we return to Jennifer Hudson's snot. What does Memories have to do with the rest of Cats? What does any song in this movie have to do with any other? After four experiences in the theater, I have absolutely no idea what Memories is about. Traditionally, the point of music theater songs is that they can't just exist on their own, they have to move the plot forward or else they halt the plot completey. But WHAT PLOT DOES CATS HAVE?!? And then, of course in the middle of the song there's(THX)
So inevitably Jennifer Hudson's outcast cat is the Jellicle Choice, why? Because she can sing loud. She makes her way to the hot-air balloon to ascend to the Heaviside layer. So what is the reward that Idris Elba and James Corden and Rebel Wilson and IanMcKellen sought so fervently? It is, very simply, a pagan sacrifice. Jennifer Hudson ascends to the Heaviside Layer to be reborn, the moment before the movie ends, she disappears in a twinkle of light, presumably the same moment when she suffocates from the lack of oxygen in the Earth's upper atmosphere.
But not before Judi Dench imparts a bizarrely long homily to the audience about how to address a cat atop one of the lions in Trafalgar Square, the moral of this story: A cat is not, a dog (original cast recording of 'a cat is not a dog'). Which is then repeated by the cat chorus at blazing fortissimo. ('a cat is not a dog').
This movie is so bad that it is one of the best movies I've ever seen. It could only be made by a great director, and Tom Hooper is a truly great director. Not of movies per se, but of TV miniseries there's hardly anyone better in the world. He is perhaps the first ever director of 'expressionist historical fiction.' The costumes and history is real, but everything is so bizarrely off-puttingly filmed that it's jarring in a way costume dramas can never be. His most famous movie is The King's Speech, but his masterpiece is John Adams, a seven-episode HBO recreation of Colonial America that so far as I know has never been bettered on celluloid. This is history as it always should be, and yet he persists in making really, really, really terrible musicals....
This movie is so bad that it is one of the best movies I've ever seen. It could only be made by a great director, and Tom Hooper is a truly great director. Not of movies per se, but of TV miniseries there's hardly anyone better in the world. He is perhaps the first ever director of 'expressionist historical fiction.' The costumes and history is real, but everything is so bizarrely off-puttingly filmed that it's jarring in a way costume dramas can never be. His most famous movie is The King's Speech, but his masterpiece is John Adams, a seven-episode HBO recreation of Colonial America that so far as I know has never been bettered on celluloid. This is history as it always should be, and yet he persists in making really, really, really terrible musicals....
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