CATS

Director
Tom Hooper
(THE DANISH GIRL, LES MISERABLES, THE KINGS SPEECH)

Starring
Francesca Hayward, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Jason Derulo, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Laurie Davidson and Taylor Swift

As the saying goes, ordinarily, cats have nine lives. Well, this cat urgently needed to redeem its second life due to the huge critical reaction that immediately followed the release of its first trailer, as many of us already know. That early controversy surrounding the awkward appearance of part-human and part-CGI cats prowling the stage of this musical didn’t disappear in a hurry and the film is going to need all the lives it can get to win over the naysayers.

First and foremost, this is the part where I tell you that CATS (2019) is my first-ever Cats experience. I’ve never seen the stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber (who has written new songs exclusively for this movie, including the Golden Globe nominated song ‘Beautiful Ghosts′), which is based on a 1939 poetry collection by T. S. Eliot. Same goes for the 1998 made-for-television BBC movie. Judging from what I know of the musical, this feature film adaptation hasn’t strayed from the plot synopsis of its stage counterpart. As a new viewer, CATS doesn’t really claw together much of a story. Rather, the film introduces a vast array of furry feline characters throughout its entire duration with one of them to be specially chosen for something we don’t really care about that much by Old Deuteronomy (the first time this character has been represented as female, played by Judi Dench).

I don’t doubt for a minute just how hard the film cast and crew have worked to make this venture to the big screen redeem itself upon its second life. Arguably, no film this year has tried harder than CATS to please its audience. Newcomer Francesca Hayward (a professional ballerina and principal dancer at the Royal Ballet in London) gives it her all, Rebel Wilson (ironically allergic to cats in real life!) adds the comedy, James Corden adds the cute and is one of very few characters who was capable of distracting me from the very distracting CGI work, and Jennifer Hudson adds the goosebumps whilst performing ‘Memory’. But in the end, not even nine lives would be enough to save this pussycat troll.

Interestingly, CATS was originally intended to be a traditionally animated film before the usually reliably brilliant filmmaker Tom Hooper came on board to direct. How and why it didn’t remain this way leaves me feeling… discombobulated. In many ways. Given the current technological capabilities of today, surely an animated movie this holiday season would have been far more appealing and engaging for the family crowd this movie is attempting to target. If CATS needed any inspiration at all for this, it just needed to take a look at what the magnificent THE LION KING (2019) achieved. It is very difficult to see how the combination of such uncomfortable and unusual CGI work, and a bare bones story, could be capable of captivating most adults, let alone children, for anywhere near the two-hour running time.

CATS just isn’t a compatible companion for the big screen. Either that, or I’m just more of a dog person.

2 stars

Viewer Discretion
PG (TBA)

Trailer
CATS

Moviedoc thanks Universal Pictures for the invite to the screening of this film.

CATS is released in cinemas throughout Australia from 26th of December, 2019.

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc
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