illdothedisheslater

Cats is a beautiful train-wreck that will ruin your Christmas.

One of my food-friend websites has a thing called NAF, where if we just want to bitch or talk about something we post NAF for “Not About Food” so if anyone’s not interested in hearing about our work, pets, health, etc. they can just skip over it. This post is 100% NAF.

(This is me after seeing Cats).

I have so many thoughts. I keep snorting and rolling my eyes at nothing. I’ll just be going along, living my life, then snort and roll as another image or memory occurs to me. I’m bemused. I’m non-plussed.

Here are some points that other reviewers have already covered, so I won’t bother too much:

• Size: Apparently Jellicle Cats are large and small, Jellicle Cats are short and tall. There is no rhyme or reason to the size and scaling of this movie. Sometimes the cats are miniature, roughly the size of beer cans. Next thing you know they’re as tall as Emperor Penguins. The sets and props are comically large, way too small, or pretty much just regular sized.
• Clothing: Some cats wear clothes. Some cats are fully naked. Some cats take off their cat skins, revealing further cat skins AND clothes underneath. Some cat legs end in furry human hands, and some just have regular human hands poking out of sleeves. Cats only wear shoes when they are either break-dancing or tapping, or they are James Corden or Taylor Swift. Only one cat ever seemed to have paws instead of feet.  No cats have paws instead of hands.
• CGI: Does no favors to anyone. Unbelievably talented dancers do weird things like start flying, or doing flips and shit, which takes you out of the movie and demeans their real dancing ability.
• Plot: Not much of one. They actually tried to beef it up, but it’s pretty much just introducing various cats who then perform a musical number about themselves. One cat is going to be chosen by Dame Judi Dench at the “Jellicle Ball”, which appears to be an Eyes Wide Shut scenario, to be ritually sacrificed or something and maybe go to cat heaven. Most of the cats seem to be vying for this honor. A Villain Cat magically zaps all the famous actor cats to a boat, where they’re chained up and threatened to walk a plank?  I think?
• Overt sexuality: Yes, this is true. The movie is extremely, inexplicably horny.  The cats are all apparently in heat the entire movie, and spend all their background time rolling, writhing, and rubbing their faces and crotches against things or each other.

Our Cast of Characters (or Cats of Characters, I guess. The opportunity for an exhausting amount of cat puns in pretty irresistible. It would be purrfectly easy to fill this review with cat puns, and I will try to resist).

• Victoria – the Ingenue Cat. She is introduced by being slung into an alley in a sack, abandoned by some lady in a car. She is wide-eyed, innocent, and extremely into all the other cats sexually. As the plot is vague, she is the audience’s entry into the Jellicle World, as all the other cats sing their autobiographical pop songs. The actress/CGI person is a beautiful dancer with a thin and pretty voice. When she meets a new cat, she immediately does a series of impressive développés and standing splits, presenting them with her Jellicle Crotch while she swoons and sways, transported to ecstasy by their songs and cat dancing.

• Stephen Colbert Cat: This cat is never given a name that I can recall, so I just call him Stephen Colbert Cat. (An IMDB search reveals his name to be Munkustrap, but I really, really don’t think they ever told us that. He didn’t get a song or personality other than Narrator Cat, might be kind of in a barely telegraphed love triangle with Ingenue Cat and Magical Mr. Mistoffelees, and is really, really turned on by Judi Dench, as everyone should be. Stephen Colbert Cat (or Justin Theroux Cat if you like) is a magnificent dancer, and fully naked all the time except for a Scooby Doo collar, and pulls a lot of faces.  He acts very hard indeed.
• Grizzabella The Glamour Cat: a.k.a. The Cat Who Sings “Memory”. Obviously this is Jennifer Hudson. She is introduced as maybe a sex worker cat? It’s implied that everyone liked her just fine until she “went with” Villain Cat, who wears a Cat Pimp outfit and hat. Anyway she’s draped in glittery scarves and furs like Norma Desmond or Stephen Tyler. One of her ears is tattered. She sings a bit about how poor and tattered she is. Then some Mean Girl Cats join in and sing with her about how poor and tattered she is, at which point Jellicle Snot begins streaming out of both nostrils, where it will remain distractingly throughout the entire goddamned movie.
• Magical Mr. Mistoffelees is kind of a bad magician cat? His character was a disappointment because I remember this number as being quite the banger, his electrified cat suit strobing wildly as he jeté‘d around the stage. Here he is reduced to a maybe-bisexual, nervous cat full of angst at his poor magician skills.  The cats need his Jellicle magic to rescue Judi Dench from a pirate ship, and he gets a big Tinker Bell moment when all the other cats have to believe hard enough, sing loud enough, and clap their paws until he can do his magic good enough.  He can shoot lightning out of his hands/paws in the beginning, which is never mentioned again or explored in any way.  He’s nice to Ingenue Cat, his clothing disappears and reappears several times for no reason (more magic?), and he often sports a top hat with cut-outs for his ears. He and Stephen Colbert Cat hiss at each other over Ingenue Cat a couple times, but that plot is largely unspoken, and might even be imaginary on the part of this reviewer. I’m about 90% sure that at the end, he and Stephen Colbert Cat end up together, leaving Ingenue Cat to her own devices.
• Old Deuteronomy: Dame Judi Dench as a cat. For the most part, Dame Dench acquits herself well in this nonsense movie, but she wears a giant fur coat the entire time (made from… cat fur? Who knows.)  She has one word that she hisses (yes, hisses) at Villain Cat that carries more weight and backstory than the entire movie.  That’s acting, folks.  No attempt has been made to CGI fur-up her hands, on which she is wearing well-fitting rings. (In another scene, a cat wears a human ring like a large bracelet.)  She is at no point naked. Her job is to select which cat gets killed and shot into the sky at the end or whatever. At one point she lifts her leg and points it straight at the ceiling, which made me snort, as Dame Dench just celebrated her 85^th birthday. If that was not CGI, then I raise a glass to you, Judi.  And one to your hip joints.  I haven’t yet seen a single review that made any sort of “Old Neuteronomy” joke, and have thus far been unable to come up with one myself, other than “Old Neuteronomy” is a funny name.  It must be mentioned that, while overtly sexual, none of the cats have Jellicle Genitals, nor do they present their anuses to the audience, which tells you plainly that they are not real cats, for whom that is an attractive pastime.
• Jennyanydots: Rebel Wilson as a cat, acting like Rebel Wilson in every Rebel Wilson movie you’ve ever seen. She is an overweight cat (“Old Gumbie Cat”) who has trained a Rockette kick-line of cockroaches to dance until she eats them.  I cannot make this shit up.  It’s gross.  As the teeniest little bit of Rebel Wilson goes a very, very long way, you can just assume correctly that she acts like Rebel Wilson for the whole movie. She is introduced scratching her crotch, and continues to do so for much longer than it makes sense for.
• Bustopher Jones: James Corden as a fat cat who wants to be reborn as a thin cat? Maybe? Mr. Corden has some legitimate Broadway cred, is a very good singer and dancer, and I sure would have enjoyed seeing him play the role instead of seeing Late Night Host James Corden play the role.
• From time to time during these endless introductions, Ingenue Cat wanders outside to stare at Grizzabella, who huddles under a guttering street lamp, drips snot all over the soundless pavement, and occasionally sings little teasing bits of “Memory”.
• Macavity: the Villain Cat played by Idris Elbow as probably a Pimp Cat, or maybe even a Pirate Cat? (Because of the plank thing?) He shows up from time to time to stir shit up. He can seemingly summon and banish cats at will, as they disappear in a cloud of dust like the vampires from Buffy, and reappear on the set of some high-budget production of Sweeney Todd. He wears a pimp/pirate hat and a trench coat and ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous blue-and-sometimes-green contact lenses, which no other member of the cast does, so it’s odd and distracting. He wants to be the chosen cat to be murdered at the end, so he magically teleports all the famous, named cats to his pirate ship or something so they can’t be picked. Spending most of the movie in his hat and trench coat, eventually he, um, sheds these and looks far naked-er than all the other cats. Like, they’re all naked, but Idris Elbow is nude. His nude cat body has pectoral muscles and abs. All of this sounds very sexy, but I can assure you it is not. Take the sexiest man in the world (sorry John Legend, but you look like a giant, very fit baby), and dress him like a sexy cat pirate, then get him fully nude and somehow it is just the opposite of what you’d hoped for.  Dreamed of.  Wished.  There is a neat bit where every time he appears, his voice comes from a different part of the movie theatre, so he’s also the Ventriloquist Cat, as well as the Villain Cat.
• Taylor Swift Cat: Her name is Bombalurina, but that doesn’t matter because she is Taylor Swift, naked, wearing high-heeled Mary Janes, and roofie-ing all the other cats with sparkly catnip. Having no personality of her own, she sings about Macavity. I didn’t hate her as much as I’d expected to, being no big fan of her grade-school lyrics and Britney-quality singing voice.  Her cat body is the worst offender in the “why do the cats have bosoms though?” problem. They are much larger than Miss Swift’s, and disturbingly high-placed on her naked cat body.  The moment she… shimmies them, you will wish for death.  I don’t know if she is a good cat or a bad cat.  She’s actually okay in this.  Her “accent” can only be described as Costner-esque, but as she’s just in the one scene, it’s not that bad. (She says “theah” instead of “there” and that’s it.) She allegedly co-wrote a new song for the movie, which is performed by Ingenue Cat and sucks really a whole lot.
• Gus the Theatre Cat: Sir Ian McKellan, appears in a different movie entirely, somehow pulling off his small role with dignity and pathos. He creates and inhabits his character and I’m sorry there likely won’t be a Wolverine-like origin story movie for Gus. His character serves absolutely no purpose to the plot.  Here is a line that someone wrote down on paper, or maybe typed, and several other people read it, approved it, then printed it out.  Sir Ian McKellan probably highlighted it in his script for the table read.  He says “Meow meow meow.”

(Actual footage of Judi Dench and Ian McKellan watching the Jellicle Ball Orgy)

• Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. I visited the ladies room during this song, so I think they’re maybe bad cats and jewel thieves?  They seem to help Macavity by supplying the roofies to Taylor Swift?  I don’t really know. They get Ingenue Cat in a bit of a pickle with an off-screen dog (Pollicle Dogs are never mentioned in the movie, unless I was in the bathroom at the time), then she’s rescued by Mr. Mistoffelees, which makes Stephen Colbert Cat jealous?  Maybe?
• Rum Tum Tugger: this is Jason Derulo, who has a surprisingly nice singing voice, but he’s also supposed to be the sexy cat and there’s something Mickey Mouse-ish about his face in the cat makeup. I didn’t quite buy it and his accent wasn’t quite as good as Taylor Swift’s masterful accent work, but all in all he was pretty good.
• Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat: exists only to have a really fun tap dance number and wear high-waisted red pants with suspenders and a big drumline hat. I thought he was played by Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott), and was disappointed that he was not. Great tapper too, though.  At this point in the movie all the cats are at their absolute smallest. They all magically grow tap shoes and dance on a rail at the train station. They must be around six inches tall at this point.  Skimbleshanks is also superfluous to any semblance of plot to which this movie aspired.
• There are lots of other cats in the background, all talented dancers, as well as an odd trio of mice that pop up from time to time. They are three children, all of whom probably played Gavroche before this. Their existence is just weird and does not fit the tone of the movie.  Except the tone of this movie seems to be “Fever Dream/Drug Trip/Sex Nightmare”, so who can really say?  The background cats don’t get the full CGI treatment and roll around in the background orgy, looking like theatre kids wearing furry Batman masks.  Also there are the Mean Girl cats, one of whom wears a thick gold chain instead of a collar, which strikes me as somehow racist, except cats don’t have races.
• I saw this movie with Mr. Dishes and my brother.  Mr. Dishes slept through about half of it, enjoyed “Memory” very much, and would like a mathematician to weigh in on the varying cat sizes compared to the props.  I caught my brother turning in his seat during one of Macavity’s voice-throwing moments.

That’s pretty much the movie. At the end, all the cats on the pirate ship somehow free themselves and teleport back to the… place where all the cats are. There is a really long dream-ballet type thing that the cats perform for Judi Dench’s amusement and possibly arousal. Rebel Wilson and James Corden do some out-of-place schtick that is distracting and wrong (hairballs, hits to the groin, etc.). Ingenue Cat invites Grizzabella the Hooker Cat into the Cathouse and tells her to sing, where Ms. Hudson belts the ever-loving shit out of “Memory”, emoting, growling, and snotting all over the place. It’s most impressive, especially when she stands at her full height, instead of cowering and crawling around.  Ms. Hudson is even taller IRL than myself, so in a room full of tiny dancers, she must be, like a really large breed of cat.  During the song all the cats cry (human tears) and change their minds about her being a tramp, or a bad cat, or a hooker or whatever. The lead Mean Girl cat seems to regret being a Mean Girl cat.  Stephen Colbert Cat is particularly devastated, or at least he pulls a lot of sad faces and drips tears into his furry face.

After hearing the big show-stopper, Judi Dench has no choice but to pick Grizzabella for the annual death ritual, and she is launched into the sky (again, this is an I-shit-you-not moment) in a hot air balloon attached to a chandelier, reminiscent of Willy Wonka’s Great Glass Elevator.  She flies away smiling, looking slightly puzzled, probably wondering why she took this role after winning a damn Oscar.  Idris Elbow tries to grab on to one of the hot air balloon ropes to go with her (to death?) and falls onto a statue, where he’s just fine and shakes his fist in frustration, still completely nude. That’s the sum total of his comeuppance.

Dame Judi Dench then sings directly into the camera about how cats aren’t like dogs (duh). Mr. Mistoffelees and Stephen Colbert run off to have Jellicle Sex, probably.  Judi tells Ingenue Cat that she’s totally, like, one of them now and they rub their faces and bodies against each other.

Le Fin.