Photo from: http://www.indiewire.com
“Cats” is the latest movie adaptation of a Broadway musical featuring work from director Tom Hooper who previously directed “Les Miserables.” From the moment of its trailer announcement, “Cats” has been met with very negative reception due to the computer-generated character design and overall look of the live action adaptation.
“Cats” is a thoroughly misguided adaptation of the stage musical without enough plot, character development or engaging musical numbers to make up for the film’s odd character design and lack of real structure. This film just seems to have all the good intentions of being a faithful adaptation of the stage musical and ending up with a film that is neither visually appealing or engaging enough to justify a two hour runtime.
From the film’s opening moments, “Cats” is shown to be truly focused on the music instead of its story as a newly abandoned cat named Victoria, played by Francesca Hayward, who joins a tribe of alley cats known as the Jellicles. The film then transcends into a series of musical numbers that briefly introduce various cat characters all culminating to a show where the Jellicle cats compete for a chance to go to the Heaviside Layer where the one chosen cat can receive a new life. Nearly all of the musical numbers are very theatrical and did not peak my interest until Jennifer Hudson as Grizzabella sings the musical’s most famous song “Memory.”
However, it truly fails as an engaging musical because the nonstop musical numbers are either fairly similar to one another or very weird to look at due to the computer-generated character design. The film suffers from cat character designs that are not visually appealing paired with sets that try to make the actors look similar to the size of actual cats to no avail. The problem is that the character designs do not make the actors look like actual cats and it becomes distracting whenever the characters dance in the film.
All of the talented actors ranging from Idris Elba as the evil cat Mcavity to Judi Dench as Old Deuteronomy are barely given any real dialogue to work with. They really only have their songs which lead to the lack of a single good performance. Most of the actors including James Corden, Ian Mckellen and singers Taylor Swift and Jason Derulo only show up for one or two scenes for a musical number in the overall production as Bustopher Jones, Gus, Rum Tum Tugger and Bombalurina, respectively. Due to the lack of subtle performances and misguided character designs, “Cats” becomes a rather boring movie musical that lacks any real structure and character to make the weird storylines work in an overall narrative.
The film simply meanders through a lot of song and dance sequences to the point that songs become dull because they only introduce new characters who are not integral to the film’s lackluster plot. Even the villains, Mcavity and Bombalurina, barely contribute to the plot and do not have any substantial arc by the film’s climax.
The film’s ending does have one or two decent emotional moments, but they are rendered meaningless because of the character designs and a rather surreal musical number where Judi Dench as Old Deuteronomy sings directly to the audience. Overall, “Cats” is a thoroughly misguided and visually unappealing musical adaptation that lacks any form of structure, plot or truly memorable songs to make this adaptation seem necessary in any way. For me, “Cats” gets a rating of a two out of 10.