Welp……..I just saw Cats. Here’s my breakdown of my experience:
To begin, some context: American in England, have no idea what Boxing Day is, have no intention of finding out, just wondering where the buses are. Since there are no buses, I wheeled halfway across the town to the movie theater. It was raining. Our town sits on a hill. Rain + Downhill = Getting there a lot sooner than I thought. So I went further downhill to the mall. Primark said they had sales. Primark did not have sales. Other stores had sales. I could have either looked at these sales or I could have wheeled my chair uphill in the rain to get to a movie theater to watch…Cats. I did the latter.
Everyone judges me for loving Vue Cinemas but I can get a ticket and a snack box for 10-ish pounds and that is fantastic and absolutely the highest I’m willing to spend on Cats.
Also, I had a gift-card from a family member who probably expected me to use it on something other than Cats. I used it.
The milkshake machine was broken. When you expect to get chocolate milk and you do not get chocolate milk, it is an omen. A sign of evil. I should have known. I should have turned back. I did not.
Have you ever seen a wheelchair accessible seat at a Vue Cinema? Neither have I. I had to sit at the front. The front row. To watch Cats.
Coming from an American who spent the last two years in NYC, Vue Cinema screens are massive. Some of the biggest I’ve seen. Including the one in this theater. And I was in the front row, looking at a massive screen, to watch………Cats…
There were too many strollers/prams/whatever-you-call-them. There were infants and children in this theater. Many. One infant couldn’t have been more than a few months old. I wonder if Cats 2019 is the first movie he’ll ever watch. I wonder if he’ll grow up to be a serial killer.
They had just put in recliner seats in this theater. Like just put them in. In fact, judging by the plastic that was on most of them, I feel like this theater wasn’t even supposed to be open. My recliner was permanently open the whole time. I could not close it. There was a weird lump in it. Combine that with Spina Bifida (i/e: a hole in my back) and I spent the entire duration of this film opening my final chakra to defeat Ozai.
The massive screen in front of me flickered to life. I had to sit through 15 minutes of commercials. Before the trailers. Two commercials were about education. I really hope they inspired someone in the audience. Like, I really hope that someone’s going to go to college and when they get asked what inspired them, they reply……..“Cats 2019″……
Vue Cinemas always has this thing where it’s like, “THIS IS NOT A CINEMA” even though ‘Cinema’ is right in the name. Every single time, they show a small clip of Sherlock. It always reminds me of the Superwholock days on this website. Today, I channeled that anxiety.
Finally…the movie started.
I mean, what can I say, that hasn’t been said already?
The set-pieces, the backgrounds, the instrumental…they were all genuinely beautiful. Someone with talent put those together. For Cats.
I seriously thought the white cat was Anne Hathaway until the credits.
I trust Gray Leader Cat. Like if I was thrown into a burlap sack and ended up in this furry cult, I feel like Gray Leader Cat would be nice to me.
At one point, the camera started shaking so bad that I genuinely wondered if the crew was trembling in fear of what they were filming.
I had heard rumors about Dame Judi Dench’s hand/ring. I braced myself. I thought I would have to look hard to see it. I did not. It’s…right there. Multiple times.
No two shots line up. Like you’d have Not Anne Hathaway raise her arms while looking to the left and the very next shot would have her kneeling on the ground while looking to the right and then the very next shot would have her raising her arms at a different angle while looking straight at the camera. This happened over and over and over again.
They…went between each other’s legs…….a lot.
Knowing next to nothing about the musical, aren’t the Not Thenardiers (the thief cats) supposed to do a cool cartwheel thing? They did not.
Was M’Cavity or whatever his name was supposed to be a direct homage to the Critically Acclaimed Lazytown’s Robbie Rotten? Because…those are the vibes I got.
I have a feeling the Magical Mr. Mushy Peas or whatever his name was is a really well-handled character in the musical. I just…he was the exact kind of stuttering, incompetent, character who seems like he would be completely suave and lovable in another edition of this story.
Rebel Wilson scratched her furry crotch for like ten seconds and then they cut to the Uncanny Valley mice and then they cut to her pulling apart her fur to reveal some gaudy sex suit and then they cut to some Uncanny Valley cockroaches and I just wanted it to end and it wouldn’t end…
At one point, Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench just share this super long, sad, look. I’d like to believe that wasn’t scripted.
And Sir Ian McKellen starts screaming, “MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!” in the middle of what was an otherwise completely in-sync choir.
Someone put their face in Dame Judi Dench’s chest and they’re going to have to live with that for the rest of their life…
Sir Ian McKellen rubs his furry chest, looking like he’s about to cry, as he sings about how theater is dead. There’s irony. Then there’s just…pain.
The railroad scene was pretty good. But it made me wonder exactly how they’re scaling these cats if the railroad is massive.
I actually liked the Mr. Mushy Peas (whatever) song and even got chills when Dame Judi Dench appeared behind them and then they took, like, the one good scene and then just added a bunch of absolutely terrible CGI with these moving flower things and…it was bad. Painfully bad.
Not Anne Hathaway was totally on board with helping out Memories Cat which made Memories Cat’s constant singing about how nobody loved her a bit weird like…the actress nailed the “TOOOOOUUUUCH MEEEEEE” notes, I’ll give her that, but it was really weird because…Not Anne Hathaway had already touched her? And had invited her into the room? And then she sang the song about wanting to be touched and invited??? It was like that one scene from Meet The Robinsons when everyone’s cheerfully talking to the kid and he’s like, “They all hated me!”
Also is it illegal to point out how similar Memories sounds to On My Own? I don’t know what’s legal anymore.
Are they dead? Is that the point? Are they all dead? Or are they in London? I mean, the few times I’ve been in London, I felt dead so…
During the final song, Dame Judi Dench looks right into the camera and the Gray Leader Cat whom I trust just looks so confused, like he’s looking around, awkwardly laughing, clearly not knowing what’s going on.
And I don’t just mean Dame Judi Dench looks at the camera for her close-ups, she does, but there’s also a very wide shot where the camera slowly rises up and Dame Judi Dench just follows it, staring into my soul.
They had a cheesy rendition of a movie-song during the end-credits like an early 2000s direct-to-video Disney sequel. I appreciated that.
At one point, my watch told me that my heart-rate was at 161. I thought I might die. I embraced it. Alas…I kept living…to watch Cats…
Since it’s still Boxing Day in this Monty Python country, I was left to aimlessly wander around, trying to find a grocery store that was open. I finally went through a back alley filled with smoke and vomit and what I’m pretty sure was blood. None of these fazed me. I was too haunted by the fact that a small infant watched Rebel Wilson scratch her furry crotch.
I had a huge craving for milk. Tesco was out of milk.
The buses still aren’t running. I have no idea how I’m getting home.
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