The answer? Extremely weird. Cats<\/em> is a movie constructed from many bad decisions (chief among them, adapting the notoriously plot-light musical in the first place). However, Hooper and his team commit so fully to every bad decision that the end result is pretty compelling, even fascinating. Through its commitment to eyebrow-raising creative choices, Cats<\/em> has become something unlikely: 2019\u2019s most interesting cult film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plot of Cats<\/em> involves a tribe of cats called the Jellicles (the name comes from T.S. Eliot\u2019s Old Possum\u2019s Book of Practical Cats<\/em>, from which the musical is adapted), who gather for an annual event called the Jellicle Ball. Victoria (Francesca Hayward) is a newcomer to the community, and serves as the audience surrogate as all of the various cats introduce themselves to her and describe their lives. At the Jellicle Ball, the leader of the cats, Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), selects a cat who will travel to the Heavyside Layer, above the clouds, and be reborn. Various cats compete for the honor, including raggedy former beauty Grizabella (Hudson), but criminal feline Macavity (Idris Elba) is determined to win by any means possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mostly, Cats <\/em>is episodic, with a scene and a song focused on a single cat, followed by another scene doing the same, occasionally interspersed with an advancement of the story, such as it is. For a two-hour movie, however, that approach gets old fast, and it starts to dawn about 45 minutes in that we\u2019ve been watching singing, dancing cats for quite a while, for no real reason. That, of course, is a problem rooted in Andrew Lloyd Webber\u2019s musical, but it\u2019s also a pretty strong argument for not making Cats<\/em> into a movie at all. Unless, perhaps, you\u2019re just really into felines with odd, humanoid features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Funnily enough, those odd, humanoid features are so off-putting and inconsistently designed that the characters actually become very interesting to watch. Trying to solve the puzzle of why each of these creatures looks so unpleasant, and what could be done to make it less so, is perhaps Cats<\/em>\u2019 most attractive quality. The faces \u2014 with the exception of Dench and Ian McKellen\u2019s theatrical elder Gus \u2014 are uncanny-valley smooth. The cats have human feet, which are fur-covered, and human hands, which are not, and disrupt the illusion whenever you look at them. Some of the cats have press-on nails that look like claws, but not all of them (perhaps the acrylic budget ran out). Some of the cats wear shoes, but no other clothes. Sometimes the cats are so fully clothed that they look almost human, until you see their face. Other times, the nakedness of the actor beneath all that \u201cdigital fur technology\u201d is apparent to a disturbing degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But despite all of these seemingly obvious issues (there\u2019s a whole other discussion to be had about the film\u2019s hilarious problems with scale), the performances in Cats<\/em> occasionally break through and are legitimately good. McKellen, in particular, really gets into character as Gus, licking dishes of cream and meowing, fully aware of how ridiculous it looks, but not caring. He, Dench, and a few of the other actors don\u2019t take things too seriously and just have fun with the roles. These are the moments in which Cats<\/em> comes closest to working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cats<\/em> is still a big, steaming mess, living up to the promise of its marketing campaign in every way. However, it\u2019s a much more watchable mess than perhaps anybody was ready for. It still doesn\u2019t work, but the ways in which it doesn\u2019t work, and its commitment to trying anyway, are worth seeing at least once. Years from now, there will be late-night screenings of Cats<\/em>, with pleasantly drunk moviegoers bellowing for milk alongside Jason Derulo\u2019s Rum Tum Tugger and imitating Hudson\u2019s melodramatic stylings. C<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tom Hooper\u2019s Cats announced what kind of movie it was going to be when the first trailer dropped this summer. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":12990,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc.png\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n1 hr., 50 min.; rated PG for some rude and suggestive humor<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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