Cats (2019)

It was so hard to decide whether or not to see Cats.  When the first trailer hit, the internet exploded with memes making fun of the special effects.  When the actual movie hit the theaters, most of the reviews were scathing.  But when I actually read the reviews, they didn’t really say anything that sounded so bad to me.

Here’s the thing:  Most of the movie’s reviewers haven’t seen the play.  Most of them wouldn’t like the play.  Most of the complaints I saw in the reviews could just as easily have described the play.  The play is long.  It is operatic, with very little dialogue.  It is surreal.  It is silly and weird.  It is oddly sexual in places.  I really can’t imagine most people liking it, but I love it.

Of the reviewers who actually mentioned that they hadn’t seen the play, 100% hated the movie.  But I don’t care about them.  The only ones I took to heart were the ones where the reviewer mentioned being a fan of the play.  Out of those, roughly half of the reviewers loved it, and half hated it.  Those that hated it mentioned changes they’d made from the play, a cast that just doesn’t put their heart into it the way the stage actors do (which could just be the difference between recording in a sound booth vs. projecting yourself to a live audience), and of course everyone mentioned the special effects.  The few people who loved it said the same things I’ve been saying: It’s supposed to be weird.

So now that I’ve finally seen it, I have to say…

*sigh*

Cats is not good.  As a fan of the play, I have to side with those who say that they changed too much.  I was in high school the first time I saw the play, and I liked the soundtrack so much that I bought it (on cassette tape, if that dates me), and often listened to it in the car on the way to school.   Yes, my friends thought I was weird, but what else was new.

For the most part, the theatrical versions of these songs aren't performed well.  They are hard to enjoy, because they're often broken up to make room for spoken lines or bad slapstick.  There was only one song in the theatrical version that I enjoyed, and that was "Macavity" (performed by Taylor Swift - her only song in the movie).  They also fiddled with the melodies.  One of my favorite songs in the play, "Mungo Jerry and Rumple Teaser", is almost unrecognizable in the movie.

They also tried too hard to give the movie a plot.  The play has almost no plot, it's mostly just unconnected songs about different cats.  There is an overall theme about how only one cat gets to go to their version of Heaven, but this is only touched on in two or three songs.  There's also a mini-plot about Old Deuteronomy getting kidnapped, but he's rescued in the very next song.

The movie milks those two subplots for all they're worth, at the price of decent performances.  In the movie, Macavity has this master plan of being selected to go to Heaven, so he's kidnapping the other cats in the running.  It's like they hoped a more fleshed-out story (still thin though it is) would appeal to a larger audience.  Instead, they slapped the core audience in the face, while failing to garner a broader appeal.

I could throw out more minor nitpicks, like how they made Growltiger (an in-unverse fictional character) into Macavity's partner, or all the failed attempts at humor using slapstick and fat jokes.  But overall it just wasn't fun, and didn't have any of the magic of the play.

The one thing I liked was what everyone else hated - the visuals.  I'm not saying they were good, not even remotely.  But they were strange and surreal enough to appeal to the weird part of my mind.  The characters reminded me of that Dreamcast game, Seaman.  

But I'm like that.  Give me something new and bad over something good that I've seen 1,000 times.   I don't care that the matting was terrible - it's a play.  You don't go to a live play expecting amazing effects; even the best plays often have the actors interact with papier-mâché horses.  And given how few people like musicals, you don't expect a movie based on a play to have a huge CGI budget.  Nothing on the screen was supposed to look realistic, it was supposed to give you a sense of wonder.  

Sense of wonder: Successfully tickled.  Everything else?  Meh.

The Filming of Cats is a Difficult Matter

I love cats.  I also love plays.  So of course it's a no-brainer that one of my favorite plays is Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats".

I saw the musical “Cats” at TPAC when I was 13 or 14, and loved it so much I bought the soundtrack.  I’ve only seen it on stage the one time, but I’ve watched the play on home video many times.  I have large portions of the soundtrack memorized.  It remains one of my favorite plays to this day.  So when I heard they were making a theatrical version, it piqued my interest.  Well, the trailer for the Cats movie dropped earlier this week, and the internet isn’t happy.

You know, I agreed about Sonic being a terrible character design.  I see their point about the new Lion King looking flat and emotionless compared to the original.  While I liked Green Lantern more than most people, they did keep getting Ryan’s head the wrong size.  And Wil Smith’s Genie did look a bit goofy in his blue form.  But I have to draw the line here.

Yes, the cats look kind of creepy, and border on the Uncanny Valley.  Their insertion into the oversized backgrounds looks sort of off, and the whole thing just makes you feel slightly uneasy.  Some of the shots look a little unfinished, so hopefully they’re still tweaking it.  But let’s be honest, the makeup in the original play was a bit strange itself.  When I saw the play back in the 80s, I heard a few adults talk about how creepy the makeup was.  Beautiful, sure, but it still straddled that Uncanny Valley.  To me, the film’s design looks like the natural progression of the stage version’s makeup.  It looks like what the stage make-up artists would like to have done if it were possible.

In my opinion, Cats was always supposed to feel weird and disorienting.  The oversized props in the stage play aren’t just to make the cast look smaller, they also serve to make the audience feel smaller as well.  As if the cats have used magic to shrink you down, translate their language, and make their faces just human enough for you to identify with them, all so you can finally understand the world from their point of view.  If they’d wanted them to look more catlike, they could have just thrown cats masks on them and called it a day.  But I think they wanted them to have human-like faces and expressions so the audience could empathize with them.  And yeah, the film version is a little reminiscent of “Seaman” for the Dreamcast, but at least it’s eye-catching.

This is not a straightforward story like Sweeney Todd or Les Miserables, and should not be compared to those.  Cats is more like a feature length music video, comparable to The Who’s “Tommy” or “Pink Floyd: The Wall”.  Can you honestly say this movie looks freakier than, say, the video for “Black Hole Sun”?  Kids these days have no tolerance for the surreal.  Get off my lawn, ya unimaginative little toddlers who need reality spoon fed to you.  After Lion King and Sonic, it’s like the internet is just looking for special effects to hate.  I pity any special effects artist who tries to do anything actually creative over the next few years.

People are asking, why not just keep the original makeup?  I agree, the stage makeup was great, and is perfectly filmworthy.  But you do realize, you can already buy a filmed version of the stage musical on DVD?  Honestly, what would even be the point of giving it a movie budget, if it wasn’t going to do something original with it?  And as odd as the new movie looks, I bet that within ten minutes you get used to it.

I love going to plays, but it’s definitely a rich person’s hobby.  I hope Cats does well in theaters, because I want them to make more theatrical versions of stage plays.  Cats is being released on the same day as Star Wars IX, so I don’t expect it to break any box office records.  Actually, I expect it’s going to bomb pretty hard.  But I hope not.  Sidetrack: My favorite part of seeing musicals in the theater is seeing how many people leave once they realize it’s a musical.  I witnessed it during “Sweeney Todd” and “Into The Woods”, and I wonder if it will happen here.  I mean, the trailer makes it look pretty obvious that it's a musical, but so did some of the other musicals.

Anyway, the Uncanny Valley can be a disorienting place, but that doesn’t mean it’s always bad.  A lot of movies have intentionally set up camp in that valley, and still turned out pretty well.  Heck, I heard mentions of the Uncanny Valley when Avatar was released, and look how much money that made.

Still, as Bombalurina says, haters gonna hate.

The Cat Burglar

Warning: Cutesy-Wutesy Kitty Story

KJ has been making pendants out of clay. When working with clay, she wooden tools. When she's not using them, she keeps them in a plastic bag, held together by a rubber band:

She keeps this downstairs, on the living room table. For the past few days, Sybil has been picking up the bag and carrying it around the room. I don't know, it must be a cat thing. We just keep taking it away from her, and putting it back on the table. So this morning, our precious Sybil brings KJ this as a present:

The plastic bag, still held together with the rubber band, minus the tools. She brought it to KJ as a gift, the same way a cat might bring its owner a dead mouse. But where were the tools? We looked all over the house, under every piece of furniture. We were dumbfounded. It seemed like there should have at least been a trail. I can picture her playing with them around the house, and losing them under furniture, as she often does with Q-Tips and milk rings. But there's nine tools in that set, we should have at least been able to find one of them.

In the end, it was Sybil who showed KJ where they were. Upstairs, in the bedroom, under some shoes. And neatly organized, for a cat.

Sybil was a bit protective of them, and didn't want to give them up. She kept complaining about us taking away her toy, and she keeps trying to get at them again.

I'm In Ur House, Upsetting Ur Kitties

We got a new kitten! KJ has been wanting one for a while, but we where waiting until we found the perfect one. Basically, she wanted one that "called to her". So today (technically yesterday now), while we were killing time before seeing a movie, we popped into PetSmart and discovered our kitten. Say hello to Sybil:

Sybil is an 8-week old female tortoiseshell. Like many kittens, she has two modes: Play and sleep.

Banchi and Honi are NOT happy about the new addition. They both ran upstairs, and have holed up in separate hiding spots. They hiss whenever we go near them, or when they see each other.

But they will get over it. Sooner or later they'll realize that the new kitten is not going away, and they'll have to accept her (or at least learn to avoid/ignore her). Until then, we're keeping their claws trimmed, and keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't hurt her.