Cats Review

 
PG: Some rude and suggestive humor Runtime: 1 Hr and 50 MinutesProduction Companies: Working Title Films, Amblin Entertainment, Monumental Pictures, The Really Useful GroupDistributor: Universal PicturesDirectors: Tom HooperWriters: Lee Hall, Tom HooperCast: James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, Francesca HaywardRelease Date: December 20, 2019I have a personal rule where I always review a new movie while sober. I had this incident a few years ago where I got whiskey drunk at a screening of The Magnificent Seven and woke up with an awful hangover, entirely forgetting the movie in the process. That said, there was no way in hell that I was going to review Cats sober. After I saw the first trailer where the Internet united and had a field day with it, I promised myself to get completely obliterated before seeing this. Hell, Universal enabled me to drink while watching, for they gave me a free cocktail ticket. Yet…  it wasn’t enough.
I must give credit where credit is due: production designer Eve Stewart did a magnificent job bringing this world to life in a manner you just don’t see nowadays. Since everything is filmed on a green or blue screen CG set in today’s day and age, it’s refreshing to see an actual set where all the props were crafted, and various locations were utilized. Seeing these practical settings where everything's made to be larger in scale than the characters truly immerses you into the world. Believe it or not, I’d love to own the artbook for this film because the production design is of incredible quality. It’s a damn shame Tom Hooper’s lazy direction limited the hard work and effort that was put into it, alongside the various distractions on-screen that prevented me from indulging in this freaky feline world.
 You know how college students have “finals week” where they’re assigned headache-inducing finals papers? We usually do them last minute and rush them to completion without proofreading and send them to our professors in hopes of getting a decent grade. Let me just say, as a college student who just rushed a last-minute paper to completion, I've never felt more seen. That same day, I experienced a big-budget movie that felt like it was rushed to completion without proofreading. By “proofreading” I mean finalizing the visual effects of its “digital fur technology”. At least college students are being reviewed by one person, but when you're a movie releasing to the public and you got the entire world judging you… holy shit. How the hell do I return this to Tom Hooper with a stamp labeled incomplete? As I’m writing this, this movie was literally “completed” yesterday, December 16 at 8 AM, yet it’s completely… how do I say it bluntly? 
How the fuck did this manage to make the Best Visual Effects Oscar shortlist when the visual effects are not even fully rendered? On a scale of one to Zemeckis, Cats boldly goes beyond the uncanny valley. It’s in a league of its own. It defeated the Zemeckis scale of uncanniness, for it is one of the ugliest and most frightening CG mo-cap heavy features I’ve seen in a long time. I give it this: they retained the anthropomorphic humanoid look of the cats in the stage plays, but people in makeup dressed as cats in spandex is more appealing than people covered head to toe in digital CG fur that is not fully rendered. In multiple shots, as the characters move, you see the CG body of the cats not fully texturized, which often catches you off guard and results in you reacting in disgust like:
Believe me, it’s not a lighting issue, for I think the lighting is consistent. It’s the CGI. Much of the shot composition is comprised of closeups, so the issues regarding final rendering are at literal face value. To make matters worse, they incorporate additional creatures, such as mice and roaches, which are also humanoid and the effects on them are worse because their human faces don’t match the size of the creatures. They just have this freakishly deformed look that would give Robert Zemeckis nightmares. Let's not forget its moments of vore that comes with it too. The costuming doesn't make a lick of sense either. Like, why do some cats wear fur jackets or shoes and then some are barefoot? One thing that stood out to me was how some hands have fur, but others don’t. For example, Jennifer Hudson just has her hands with clip-on nails. For something that prides itself in featuring “digital fur technology”, it would be nice to witness it at its full realization where I’m not distracted by the pieces of human skin popping out of the CG body. Anyway, I digress. This film was weird from the get-go, but what about the story?
STORY?! PFT! It’s Cats. If you don’t know a damn thing about the musical, don’t go into this expecting anything of a cohesive narrative. You’re getting a direct adaptation of the source material but on a big screen. All of the criticisms regarding the musical and its lack of a cohesive narrative — and still not knowing what the hell “Jellicle” means — are present here, but because this is a big-screen adaptation, there was room for potential in the writing department to make this some sort of a meaningful — or at least comprehensible — story. I’m not familiar with the structure of the musical, but this adaptation has an excruciatingly routine cycle of introducing you to one cat who has their own defining quirky feature, having them sing their song in an underwhelming, yet slightly terrifying, set-piece, only to move onto the next cat who has their own defining quirky feature, having them sing their song in an underwhelming and slightly terrifying set-piece. But because this film features a star-studded cast, you barely get any sense of a character, for you just get that performer projecting their known shtick with the occasional cat impersonation. Rebel Wilson’s cat is just Rebel Wilson doing her entire shtick. James Corden’s cat is just James Corden doing his shtick. It never ends. The only person who I seemed to enjoy watching as he chewed up the scenery was Idris Elba as Macavity, but that's only in spurts. 
The film has the power to use its weirdness to its advantage, to be insane AND fun, but Hooper’s lazy framework restrains him from doing so. A musical is only as good as its musical numbers and no matter how upscale the settings are and how great the choreography is, it always boils down to how the filmmaker presents it. The shot composition is mostly comprised of closeup shots, but this is emphasized in most of the musical numbers, so you oftentimes have the performer mugging for the camera as the background cat dancers are blurred into the background. You had the tools to make the shot composition inventive and immerse the audience, but everything stays at ground level. It doesn't help that the editing is god awful, for it features continuity errors galore. This is a constant recurrence that made the picture in its entirety just a dull, soulless experience that nobody can take joy in watching. And let me remind you that I was drunk. By the finale, I had to think hard to figure out who this would appeal to and the answer boils down to no one. It's not an enjoyable train wreck to witness for a general audience. It wouldn't appeal to kids. Even though the film is rated PG, this would completely terrify children with its uncanniness, and this is coming from someone who was freaked out by the Cats Broadway play promo that was on their VHS copy of The Borrowers. If the promo for the Broadway play freaked me out as a kid, and this film adaptation is even more terrifying to me as an adult, just imagine the effect this would have on kids. Plus, kids today have been raised on such good cinema that they have certain expectations regarding quality. Even for the musical theater geeks, none of the songs performed leave any sort of impact. Not even Jennifer Hudson’s cover of “Memories”. It’s a great cover, but there’s no emotional resonance at all.
I wanted to give Cats the benefit of the doubt, but I keep going back to the fact that this is unfinished, and they rushed it for a certain deadline… and that deadline happened to be Star Wars. Congrats, Universal. Your Cats beat out 20th Century Fox’s Chipmunks for the title of “Most Pathetic Star Wars Counterprogramming Release Ever”. Remember back in 2015, long before Disney purchased Fox when The Force Awakens was coming out and Fox decided to release Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip on the same day as counterprogramming? I can't believe I'm defending those fucking chipmunks, but even though that was a blatant cash grab, at least it was a cohesive movie and the visual effects were complete! Paramount Pictures laid out the ground floor for you when they redesigned Sonic and PUSHED THE RELEASE DATE BACK. 
You already took the L by greenlighting this in the first place. The least you could do was keep your dignity, swallow your pride, follow Sonic, and push the release date back to 2020 so the animators could've made their final renders on the cats’ fur textures/movements and edited the continuity errors. This whole film looks like something of an assembly cut rather than a final product. Screw this movie for making me defend the friggin’ Disney live-action remakes. At least Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin tried and there was an actual sense of excitement for brief moments. At least The Lion King’s visual effects were effective and compensated for the sheer laziness of the film overall. This is literal Hollywood counterprogramming at its absolute laziest and it’s disastrous. Whoever made the decision to release this on the same day as fucking Star Wars deserves to get fired. You have Spies in Disguise and Little Women opening on Christmas Day. Those two movies are good. This is the total antithesis of that. It's an utter embarrassment for everyone involved. Tom Hooper, you got lucky with Les Mis, but I better not see you helm another musical adaptation ever again. God, I can't even look my own cat in the eye for a while.  Rating: 1.5/5 | 30%