'Cats' Is Unmitigated Failure, Studio Already Issues Theaters an Updated Version of Film
As a Broadway show, “Cats” was legendary. As a movie, not so much.
In fact, the film that hit theaters over the weekend is so flawed that an updated version of the movie with “some improved visual effects” is already on its way to theaters, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Director Tom Hooper had said he wanted to work on the CGI effects for the film, which was just barely ready for its premiere Dec. 16.
The movie, which cost $100 million to make, opened to a lowly $6.5 million on its debut weekend, according to Fox Business.
Audiences and critics are both unimpressed: The move has a C-plus CinemaScore and an abysmal 18 percent reviewer rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The initial reaction to the movie’s trailer had been negative, leading some of its stars to talk up the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“To make someone look as realistic and human and cat-like as well is not really something that’s been seen before,” actor Danny Collins said. “So we were always expecting some reaction to it. I thought the strong reaction was quite amusing really — my personal feeling is that was kind of better than there being no reaction, than people kind of being like ‘meh.’ I think a lot of people who have never seen the stage show before and don’t know the concept of it at all were like, ‘What is this?'”
Actor Laurie Davidson said he was “just obsessed with the fact that I had ears and a tail. I think when anything new is breaking new ground — something like this has never been done before and you’re always going to get — but they’ve done an amazing job and the film is just beautiful. I think audiences are just going to get themselves completely lost in this film, in this world and these characters. I can’t wait for that to happen.”
Hooper had said he hoped the film — which stars Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, Rebel Wilson, Sir Ian Murray McKellen, Dame Judi Dench, James Corden and Idris Elba, among others — would be timely in today’s polarized political world.
“I think this film is about the perils of tribalism and the power of kindness,” he said. “I think, in this moment, to make a film which shows that one kind act can redeem a lost soul is what I’d like to be making.”
Twitter was not exactly feeling that vibe.
I watched Cats in a sustained, two hour, full-body recoil. It is HIDEOUS. It is TERRIBLE. It is NIGHTMARE and CHAOS come to horrible life.
THEY NEVER STOP SINGING#CatsMovie
— Sarah Marrs (@Cinesnark) December 19, 2019
I’ve been trying to write a tweet for #CatsMovie for almost 20 minutes and I just can’t come up with anything. I’m truly speechless. I’m baffled by the fact that this movie exists. I don’t even know what an actual cat looks like anymore. It’s a truly horrifying experience. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/7Z36M5aAbV
— Austin Burke (@theBurk3nator) December 20, 2019
The worst film of the decade comes in just under the wire — and its name is #CATSMovie. Read Peter Travers’ zero-star review https://t.co/A6L1o1dqO7 pic.twitter.com/9aS4hTsaz3
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) December 19, 2019
However, as noted in a collection of reviews by The Washington Post, the critics had plenty of other things to say.
“To call ‘Cats’ a cinematic experience unlike any other does not do justice to precisely how mind-meltingly bizarre ‘Cats’ is. To say it must be seen to be believed is to undersell just how hard it is to believe it even once you’ve seen it. ‘Cats’ is a movie to make you feel sky-high even when you’re stone-cold sober, to push an otherwise even-keeled mind into Joker-like peals of hysterical random laughter,” Angie Han wrote on Mashable.
“I truly believe our divided nation can be healed and brought together as one by ‘Cats’ — the musical, the movie, the disaster. In other news, my eyes are burning. Oh God, my eyes,” Ty Burr wrote in The Boston Globe.
“In fact, there are moments in ‘Cats’ I would gladly pay to unsee, including the baby mice with faces of young girls and the tiny chorus line of cockroach Rockettes — again, with human faces — that Jennyanydots gleefully swallows with a crunch. Anyone who takes small children to this movie is setting them up for winged-monkey levels of night terrors,” he wrote.
Burr called the film a “towering, triply-compounded work of kitsch” and “a triumph of vulgar, wrongheaded ‘showmanship.'”
Alex Cranz of Gizmodo wrote, “I have been processing this movie for the last 24 hours trying to understand anything as terrifying and visceral a trainwreck as Cats. You have to see Cats. You must witness the hubris of director Tom Hooper. You must witness the hubris of Hollywood. The hubris of these performers.”
Writing in the Seattle Times, Moira McDonald admitted the movie had an impact.
“Sometimes, you watch a movie just feeling your brow furrow,” she wrote. “If I look older this week, you can thank ‘Cats’ the movie, which I watched in what can only be described as shell-shocked puzzlement, as questions rose up around me.
“Why do all the cats stand like they’re in a Bob Fosse show? Why is the scale of things so weirdly inconsistent — in the same scene, one cat successfully wears human shoes while another wears a human ring as a bracelet? Why is one cat, and only one, wearing pants? What is Idris Elba doing here? And am I understanding the plot correctly: These cats are all vying to go to the Heavyside Layer, which basically means that the winner, um, dies?”
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
