Cats (2019) Review

"Milk!"

-Rum Tum Tugger

After being abandoned by her owner, Victoria (Francesca Hayward) comes across a tribe of Jellicle cats.  It happens to be the night where the oldest member of the tribe, Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), is going to pick one of the cats to be given a new life.  Victoria gets to meet and watch the cats that ache to be chosen and one of them, Macavity (Idris Elba), will do anything to be the one.

What Works:

This movie was a mess, as I'm sure you've heard by now, but there are portions of it that I liked.  When the musical numbers get smaller and focus on one character instead of a show-stopper, I enjoyed the movie.  Ian McKellen's theatrical performance is very emotional and interesting.

Taylor Swift also does a great job with her minuscule screen-time.  She has an excellent song and brings an energetic performance.  I only wish she was in more of the movie.

Jennifer Hudson is the best part of the film and transcends this insanity.  She sings twice and both times are incredible.  The amount of emotion she brings to these songs is truly spectacular.  I've heard some people say her performance didn't really fit with the rest of the film and that's true.  She's far superior to the rest of it.

Finally, Rebel Wilson and James Corden have some funny moments, not a ton, but some.

What Sucks:

Man, where do I even begin?  This movie is just a mess.  It was like watching someone else's nightmare because I didn't understand what was happening and what I was seeing was terrifying.

Let's start with the CGI, which clearly wasn't finished.  I saw the version where you could see the characters had human hands at points, so obviously it wasn't done, but that isn't all.   You can't look at the mice and cockroaches in Rebel's Wilson's song and tell me that's supposed to be the finished product.  I'll be surprised if I ever sleep again after seeing those cockroaches.

I had a really hard time following the story as well.  It took me forever to realize they were singing about Jellicle cats, not angelical cats.  To be fair, I was very distracted by the unnerving musical numbers, but the effects of a movie shouldn't distract from the story.  I got the general gist of the story, but I had a difficult time figuring out who was doing what and why.

The characters themselves are uncomfortable to watch.  Watching humans behave like cats just felt weird.  Every time characters rubbed their faces against each other, I was uncomfortable and watching them move legitimately felt like I was having a nightmare.

There was so much going on in some of the larger songs that it was very overwhelming.  I was suffering from sensory overload.  This movie has a lot going on a lot of the time and that isn't a compliment.

Finally, Victoria was a pretty lackluster protagonist.  She had precious little character and was by far the least interesting cat in the group.  I wish the movie had given us more of a reason to care about her than they did.

Verdict:

Cats was like watching someone's nightmare come to life.  The visual effects were embarrassing and uncomfortable, the musical numbers were often overwhelming, the story was hard to follow, and the main character was boring.  That said, I liked some of the smaller-scaled numbers and Taylor Swift, Ian McKellen, and Jennifer Hudson were great.

 4/10: Bad