Okay. I think I’m ready to start talking about this.
This is going to be a lot, so I will do a courtesy text break. If you’re on a device that doesn’t allow for a text break, I’m… I’m so fucking sorry.
When I was a kid, I had two chief obsessions: convincing my parents to get me a pet, and musicals. Well, specifically one musical: Annie. In the early 90s there was this televised talent search to cast the next Annie on Broadway, and as a child with a flair for the dramatique, I became pretty obsessed with the thought of how great it would be to be me! a kid! but famous! On Broadway!!!
Obviously I did not get the part, because I did not go to the audition, because both of my parents worked full time and were not inclined to switch careers to Stage Parents at that juncture. Also, obviously, because it would have been a real crushing blow for 6 year old me to discover that what I believed was “dancing” looked to the outside observer like “a medical emergency.” But! My mom bought me a cassette tape of the soundtrack and then took me to see the touring production of Annie when it came to town, and holy shit, I was just star struck with the entire concept of stage musicals after that. I thought they were the most incredible thing on earth, and I wanted to see every single one.
I remember the exact moment that my perspective shifted. It was 1998, I was 9, and I had just turned the TV on to PBS in the hopes of catching some Wishbone. Instead, I saw this:
Obviously, I didn’t understand what I was looking at, because to my inexperienced (and absolutely correct) eyes, what I was seeing was a clown in rags singing the world’s most boring song, forever. Then the camera cut to the audience, and there, in the aisles, were more awful clowns, lurching around, getting in people’s faces, a blur of leotards and faux fur. I was concerned. I got my mother. “What is this?” I asked, pointing at the screen.
“Oh god.” She said. “It’s Cats.”
The pieces fell into place. I had heard of Cats. I had desperately wanted to see Cats. It had both of my interests! But this…
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“I have no idea.” My mom said. “Your dad and I saw it on Broadway, and when we left, we both agreed that we’d pay twice the price of those tickets to get those three hours of our lives back.” She shook her head, and walked back into the kitchen. I stared at the TV for a moment longer, then turned it off. I had just learned something that rocked my 9 year old world to its core:
Musicals could be terrible.
I am 31 years old now, and I still like musicals, but until today, I’d avoided Cats at all costs. Don’t get me wrong, I’d skimmed the wikipedia, I’d used photos for comic effect, I was aware that someone named Rum Tum Tugger was involved, and I knew, vaguely, that Cats was about something called Jellicles that were competing to die. I was also well aware that a movie had been made, and that it had developed a reputation as a total shitshow from the second it was released.
Now, I like bad movies a lot. Like, I’ve seen all the Twilight films in theaters. I get genuine joy from watching movies like The Room, Manos: The Hands of Fate and The Wicker Man. When my friend mentioned wanting to see Cats at brunch today, I was immediately in, since I’d heard that they were releasing a version with improved CGI after the first round of reviews came out, and I wanted to get in while I could still see the worst possible version. I want to establish that my friend and I were on the same page. We knew this movie was going to suck, and our plan included me smuggling in two of those 5 oz bottles of wine in my purse.
I’m thinking back to the moment where we gave our tickets to the checker, 4 hours ago BC. “What are you seeing?” He asked us. “Cats!” We both laughed. He gave us what was, in retrospect, a sinister smile. “Awesome.” He said ominously.
During the trailers, it quickly became obvious that the social order was about to fall apart. This theater had assigned seating, but even though the theater definitely wasn’t full, people were just kind of sitting wherever. I realized after a while that there were two camps in that theater; a minority were taking their kids to the movie about kitties, and the majority were here to see a garbage fire. Notably missing: fans of the longest running Broadway Musical of All Time, Cats.
The lights dimmed, and bags started rustling. We were clearly not alone in sneaking alcoholic beverages into this theater. To reiterate, since my friend and I are not terrible assholes and had no intention of drinking and driving, we brought slightly less than one serving of wine for each of us.
We really should have just Ubered.
I sat in the parking lot afterward, and wrote as many thoughts out as I could while it was still fresh in my mind. Before I share them, I will provide you with my newly formed understanding of what the plot of Cats is: A human being is driving a car, which contains a burlap sack, which contains a cat whose name I never learned, who is our protagonist. She is thrown out of the car by the human, and is discovered by approximately 30 Jellicle Cats (more on that below). They introduce themselves to her, one by one, over the course of several hours, and then one of them dies. That’s it. That’s the framework we have to work with. The rest of this post is pieced together from what I shared with various group texts immediately after the film.
At first, the visual appearance of the cats is jarring to the point of distraction. The size of the cats is wildly inconsistent from shot to shot, and the relative size of the props and sets to the cats makes absolutely no sense. At one point, they’ll just look like a normal human eating a normal sized chicken leg, then they’ll suddenly be eating a shrimp bigger than their mouths could possibly fit around, and they’ll eat it in one bite.
After Protagonist Cat emerges from the burlap sack, she is surrounded by a bunch of cats who begin singing a song to explain that they are Jellicle Cats. The song occasionally includes lyrics that seem like they should define what a Jellicle is, but then you listen to it, and it’s just like “A Jellicle Cat has a tail and paws!” i.e. indistinguishable from any definition of A Regular Cat.
The cats seem to communicate in three ways: dancing, song, and nuzzling. Each cat seems to have their own unique dance style, except when they don’t, and whatever they are communicating through these dances seems to be understandable only by Jellicle Cats. Protagonist Cat does a lot of ballet. As she danced, I genuinely tried to parse if she was showing us that she was happy? Sad? Anxious? I guess that’s up to us to interpret, because it’s the same fucking dance every time.
The nuzzling is also bewildering, because it seems to be used interchangeably for every type of affection, whether romantic or platonic. As a result, everyone looks like they are just about to kiss, but nobody ever kisses. Cats with romantic attachments nuzzle and gaze at each other the exact same way that the youngest actors do to the venerable Dame Judy Dench, rendering the whole gesture wildly nonsexual. And yet! It always feels like this whole mess of cats is on the verge of fucking!
We start out in a graveyard, where the cats do a dance that communicates nothing. The cats are all more or less nude at this point except for one cat that is wearing a top hat and a spangled vest. We are informed that he is a magician. He has a magic wand that is actually a scaled up pencil, and even though he looks like this, he is somehow the Protagonist Cat’s romantic interest.
We then go into Rebel Wilson’s house. Rebel Wilson, we are told, is a Gumby Cat, a term that is never explained or referenced after her intro song. She spends a lot of the song doing poses that would expose her genitals if the cats were not all perfectly smooth down there.
Rebel Wilson eats a series of cockroaches whole. The cockroaches are portrayed by scaled down human beings kind of dressed like cockroaches. They have tiny human faces, and are sentient. I think she also either eats or attempts to eat some mice, which are also tiny humanoids but with the faces and voices of children.
“Wow, this movie is gonna be big with vore fans.” I whispered to my friend. “What’s vore?” She, the person most likely to both know and talk about strange sexual fetishes that I have ever met, whispered back. An intense whispered discussion followed.
I think this is when the Jellicle Cat song happened for the second time. It made as much sense as the first time. Somewhere in here, we also learned that all the cats want to compete to go to cat heaven, which is called something dumb, so they can be reborn as a different cat. We also learn that only one of them is allowed to go to heaven per year, and the one who gets to die is selected at the Jellicle Ball.
Rebel Wilson appears to get killed by Idris Elba, who is an evil cat who is allowed to wear a big fur coat and keep more of his human features than the other cats.
Jason Derulo shows up. He is a Sexy Cat and he has back up dancers who are wearing sneakers. He introduces himself through a lengthy song at a bar that apparently serves only milk. Who built this bar? Why is it scaled to the cats’ size on the inside, but human size on the outside?
The actor Jason Derulo laps up cream from a saucer with his human tongue, and I say “No.” out loud for the first time.
This is the first point where I noticed that the visual effects team neglected to digitally erase the large white zipper on the back of one of the cat costumes. It will not be the last.
James Corden appears. He sings a lengthy song to introduce himself. His thing is that he is very fat, which we are supposed to laugh at. He eats a lot of garbage in an alley containing cans filled with cartoon garbage, like whole shrimp and perfectly intact fish skeletons. At one point, he gets hit in the area where balls would be if the cats were not perfectly smooth in the genital area, and goes oooooooooof!
He is also killed by Idris Elba, but then it turns out that neither of them have been killed, just teleported to a barge in a river, because Idris Elba has the power of teleportation. They are chained and guarded by kind of a Timothy Spall type cat.
Protagonist cat gets seperated from the 30ish other cats, and meets two cats named Mungo Jerry and Rumpleteaser, who are felons. There is a lot of sexual energy between them, but they have very similar pelts, so I think they are siblings?
Anyway, they teach Protagonist Cat how to burgle a home of its jewels, you know, like cats do, but then a dog approaches outside the door and they run away while Protagonist Cat starts to choke because the enormous human pearls she has stolen get caught on something.
Just when we are about to see whatever fucking nightmare a dog would be in this universe, the magician cat shows up and saves the protagonist cat. He then sees her stolen goods, and looks upset. She becomes very ashamed and tries to put them back, but she forgets to put back the ring that she is wearing as a large bracelet because a human ring would be the size of a large bracelet to a cat apparently.
They rejoin the other cats and a gray cat asks her about the ringclet and the magician covers for her and says it’s his and the gray cat looks suspicious and then it’s never ever ever mentioned again.
Somewhere in here, Jennifer Hudson shows up. We are told that she is a Glamour Cat. There are three mean girl cats who do not get their own introduction songs that dislike her, so she looks sad and runs away.
Dame Judy Dench arrives. She is basically a human face superimposed on an orange cat head without any effort at blending the two together. She is the leader of the Jellicle cats, we are told during her lengthy introduction song, and she decides which cat gets to die.
All the cats go into a theater, which seems to be specifically designed for cats.
There is a dance sequence which means nothing. Ian McKellan is now one of the cats in the room, and he is even less of a cat than Judy Dench.
I first noticed around this point that the sound mix is heavily focused on the panting breaths of the various cats.
Ian McKellan sings a lengthy introduction song. We are informed that he is a theater cat. His song is unintelligible, and is inter-cut with the exact same shot of Dame Judy Dench kind of smiling at least eight times.
It occurs to me that they are all theater cats.
Idris Elba teleports Ian McKellan to the barge.
Protagonist cat goes outside, and sees Jennifer Hudson again. Jennifer Hudson sings “Memory,” the one song from Cats that anyone knows. I turn to my friend, and she mutters “…this is the high point of the show, isn’t it.”
By this point, the theater is has nearly emptied of the people who wanted to bring their children to see a movie about Cats. As the final two stragglers leave, the theater is treated to the sound of a six year old boy telling his father “I hate it.”
“We all do.” The father replies.
Now that the kids and parents have all left, the energy in the theater boils over to become absolutely feral. Nobody is bothering to hide that they are drinking beers anymore. People are texting. The teens to my left are passing a phone around to communicate, and I sneak a peek at the screen, where one of them has written in huge font “IT IS A VIBE, THO.”
A cat who has not been named yet, but stands out as the only cat who is permitted pants, introduces himself through a lengthy song. He is a train cat, which is nothing. He does a tap dance to imitate the sound of a train, and all the cats shuffle single file down a rail, and they are so, so much tinier than they were mere minutes ago. The train cat has a handle bar mustache and red suspenders.
We are reminded that there is a villain in this movie, played by Idris Elba, and as the sound of an unmistakable villain song begins, a moon prop begins to descend from the top of the theater stage, with a high heel hanging over it. For a brief moment, we all live in a universe where Idris Elba is about to salvage this by doing a sweet villain song in spangled heels.
Of course not. Taylor Swift appears instead, and sings the villain song that was clearly written for Idris Elba’s character. While all the other cats with breasts appear to have had their breasts digitally flattened, Taylor’s have been left unaltered. The effect is jarring.
She gets all the cats high, and finally at the end, Idris gets to sing the last few lines of his character’s song. He asks Judy Dench to let him die, and she says no because he is a cheater, so he teleports Judy Dench to the barge.
All the other cats are very upset, because they cannot use magic like Idris Elba to bring Judy Dench back. But what if we can? Protagonist Cat suddenly exclaims, and gives a meaningful glance at Magician Cat. “Oh, fuck you.” Someone in the audience sighs, to murmurs of approval.
The teens to my left just start openly juuling at this point.
We cut to the barge, where Idris Elba instructs the guard cat to make Dame Judy Dench walk the plank. It is heavily implied that this will kill her.
Nobody even reacts to this because this is honestly one of the more reasonable concepts that have been introduced in this film.
The magician cat gets a lengthy introduction song, where we learn that he is a magician cat again. He tries and fails to summon Judy Dench several times but then it turns out that the last time it worked.
Cut to the barge. James Corden and Rebel Wilson and Ian McKellan escape their chains, and push the cat that was guarding them overboard, and then we don’t see them again. During this sequence, the cat that was guarding them gets hit in the space where balls would be if it weren’t perfectly smooth, and goes “ooooooooooooof.”
Jennifer Hudson reappears. She sings “Memory.” Again. It’s the same fucking song, but she sings it again
I wonder if I have time to go to the bathroom during this song, but I tell myself that surely it won’t go for that long since she’s already sang it once. This has got to be the finale, and I don’t want to miss the end.
I notice my friend is asleep.
We have eight more reaction shots of Judy Dench faintly smiling, then the encore performance of Memory ends, and Judy Dench decides that Jennifer Hudson gets to die.
I could have gone to the bathroom and gotten back in time. I could have fucking gone to the bathroom, filed my taxes for 2020, and gotten back in time.
Jennifer Hudson gets into a chandelier, which is revealed to be a hot air balloon basket, attached to a hot air balloon that we are led to believe has been there this whole time,l. She ascends towards cat heaven as the sun rises.
Not so fast! Idris Elba jumps onto a rope dangling from the basket!
He almost immediately loses his grip for absolutely no narrative reason and falls, but not even enough to kill him, just enough that he lands on tower or something and looks disgruntled.
What’s up next for the grand finale? Probably a reprise of the song where they don’t define what a Jellicle cat is, right? I wake my friend up so we can bet on whether they’ll actually explain what a Jellicle cat is this time.
It is not the Jellicle cat song. Instead, we get an extreme close up on Dame Judy Dench, who breaks the fourth wall to stare directly at the audience. She then sings a song about how to politely greet a cat, which goes on for thirteen months. The music swells, the shot changes to reveal all the cats gazing at her in awe, the chord resolves, and then… back up to the closeup while she sings another verse.
The chorus of this song is something like, “Please let me your memory jog/ A cat is not a dog,” which, like, has not been a concern for this film up until this moment.
Every time it turns out that the song isn’t over, there is an audible groan from everyone in the theater. When it finally, finally ends, someone near the front yells “YES!”
Dame Judy Dench tells protagonist cat that she is now a Jellicle cat.
The screen cuts to black… and the Jellicle cat song starts playing again.
I have never heard a theater erupt in sarcastic applause before.
The lights come back up, and everyone stands up and just looks at each other. Strangers, staring at strangers, shaking their heads. We have been through something together. I want to be on a group text with everyone in this theater.
“What the fuck is a Jellicle?” I ask my friend as we walk out of the mall, and two people who are on different trajectories towards their own cars whip around and simultaneously exclaim, “WHAT THE FUCK IS A JELLICLE!?”
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