Tom Hooper, “Cats” and My Personal Existential Crisis
Katherine Hebert
My Existential Crisis
A year ago I was called in for Jellylorum for a production of “Cats”. For the uninitiated, she is the one that sings “Gus the Theatre Cat” in Act Two. Like many of my musical-obsessed friends I didn’t hold much stock in “Cats” who amongst the most enthusiastic theatre fans has a notorious reputation, to say the least. My opinion for years was that “Cats” was a plotless spectacle lacking any intent or perspective, put simply “all flash and no substance”.
To prepare for my appointment I rewatched the 1998 filmed production (that I genuinely recommend if any part of you is into 80’s spandex and killer choreography) with an initial irritation and was flabbergasted by my own emotional response. I was entertained, genuinely entertained and when I finally reached “Gus the Theatre Cat'' a song that I’d always skipped when I was younger rather then finding the song to be a boring halt to what thus far had been a sequence of fast-paced earworms with truly impressive choreography instead found myself hanging on every word that came out of this aging feline’s mouth.
Maybe it was because I was older or maybe it was the pretension that comes only with possessing a BFA but upon this viewing I was shocked to find a song about reliving your glory days and for a second believing their may indeed be a way to escape the fate of aging into irrelevance before watching that hope be snuffed out in real time. A scene that I never watched as a child I found boring was heart-wrenching in adulthood. Regardless of how I felt and still feel about this piece, these are profound sentiments in a show marketed to families about dancing cats. And while researching this piece the last thing I thought I’d discover was how much it had to say about existential anxieties.
I share this anecdote not because I now love this piece, I still have many issues with it, but merely to point out that this musical is often relegated to an outlier, citing it’s fantastical elements, unconventional appearance and obscure structure as proof of its lack of merit when in fact these elements are exactly the reason why it was impactful to countless theatre kids who grew up with it. Just because it isn’t for me doesn’t mean it’s bad. For better or worse nothing like “Cats” exists, and at the end of the day that’s something I’d rather admire then condemn.
After this revelation and in the wake of a pandemic that’s shoved even the most dedicated of artists into their homes, I decided to give Tom Hooper’s critically panned film adaptation a chance if for no other reason then it would be fun to write about. After viewing this film I say with complete certainty that while the stage play has misunderstood merit, the film is just as bad as high school “Too Good For Spandexed Kittens” me proclaimed it to be.
Some Positivity
There are about 15 total minutes of this movie where I can see what they were going for and where it almost sort of works. I unironically think “Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat”is better in the film than it is in the stage version and making the song a tap number was a stroke of genius that I genuinely hope is folded into future productions because it really works. I miss duet in Macavity but having Taylor Swift’s character drug the cats with Catnip during the song gives the piece some motivation that is lacking in the original production and explains why the entire cast suddenly starts dancing to a song idolizing the show’s antagonist.
Plus there’s something so iconic about Taylor Swift ascending from above on a crescent moon after not being present for the last hour of the film, drugging all of the Cats, performing a lounge number, then falling off the movie for the remainder of the runtime. Jennifer Hudson is a brilliant Grizzabella and her rendition of “Memory” is incredibly moving. Robert Fairchild, Francesca Hayward, and Jason Derulo are all well cast and are brilliant performers. In fact it’s fair to say that except for a few performances this film’s failings are of no fault to the cast who do an incredible job with the material they're given.
DEAR GOD WHY
Unfortunately, 15 watchable minutes do not a successful adaptation make. This film is bad, it’s very bad. It’s so bad that after downloading the film off Amazon for this review my computer literally locked itself in a perpetual startup loop that prevented me from completing this article for a literal month.
The failings of this movie from a visual standpoint have been picked over meticulously by nearly every mainstream film critic and in this regard, I’m willing to give some grace. The look of “Cats” has always been off-putting to some audience members before the show was ever brought from the stage to the big screen.
When we watch a stage play our ability to suspend our disbelief is greater, therefore when a human actor comes onstage in a spandex jumpsuit with their face painted and says “I’m a cat” we accept that as a fact regardless of how convincing the illusion is. The film world is incredibly different, because we aren’t literally in the room with the performers, because the performance isn’t live and because more often than not the action is playing out on a set that mimics our reality in a hyper-realistic way. Therefore it is harder for most audience members to suspend their disbelief when watching films. Put simply if you weren’t on board with the costuming of the stage play you were not going to be won over by the hyper-realistic look of the cats on screen.
With this in mind, bringing a live-action version of a very spectacle heavy, interpretive piece like “Cats” to the big screen was never going to be the successful family picture that I’m sure Universal wanted. The decision to bring Tom Hooper on as a director only compounded this issue. Tom Hooper is a director obsessed with hyper-reality, many would argue this element strengthened his gritty take on “Les Miserables” which garnered several Oscar nominations and a win for Anne Hathaway who portrayed Fantine. Personally, it wasn’t my cup of tea but the film has undisputed merit. No matter how you feel about Hooper’s “Les Mis” it’s apparent that he was out of his depth when it came to “Cats”.
For me this was most evident anytime the “Cats” would dance, and let’s get one thing straight this piece lives or dies by the execution of its choreography. Andy Blankenbuehler of “Hamilton” fame choreographed the “Cats” movie which could have been and in many ways was a masterful move. Unfortunately, the camera work and the editing is so baffling we can barely make out what the performers are doing. Rarely does the camera pan out so the audience can take in Blankenbuehler’s choreography which I have no doubt was probably incredible, and for the record what little you can see is spectacular. But from needless medium shots in the middle of dance sequences to a constant need to cut away from a well-choreographed moment before the phrase has finished it’s clear that Hooper is uncomfortable capturing choreography. Worse than that there are multiple numbers where you literally cannot tell who is singing, for example more than half of “Bustopher Jones” is sung by another character who is rarely in frame while singing so you spend half the number wondering who’s talking right now as James Corden stuffs his face with CGI garbage. But the way this film is shot is only the tip of the iceberg, Each change made when translating this piece from stage to screen is more baffling than the last.
From changing the arrangement of “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer”, killing any momentum the song “Mister Mistoffelees” had, to the incredibly disturbing decision to cast what appear to be child actors as mice that are constantly being threatened with live consumption by our human cat protagonists none of it adds to the piece but rather hinders it massively. This is most evident in “The Old Gumbie Cat” where a much raunchier version of Jennyanydots unzips her skin to reveal another skin that’s wearing a sequined dance costume before doing a tap number with anthropomorphic cockroach showgirls. In the stage version, the roaches are cats in costume and the song is presented as a sort of pantomime with the actors pretending to be both the mice and insects in a very tongue and cheek performance. In the film however they’re literal cockroaches, at one point Rebel Wilson eats one of them and it is just as disturbing as it sounds.
Speaking of Rebel Wilson she is the only celebrity that gives a poor performance. James Corden is a very serviceable Bustopher Jones and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he probably didn’t write the jokes about his weight. Ian Mckellen gives a heart-warming performance as Gus. But Wilson doesn’t have the stamina or vocal ability to replace the Andrews Sisters-esque trio that usually dominates the character’s song. Hooper shouldn’t have made her sing live. And the human faces digitally imposed onto these showgirl-insect monstrosities is all the more alarming when the dancers seem literally in fear of Rebel Wilson who might literally eat them over the course of the number. What was once a funny tongue in cheek tap number now feels utilitarian with its performers no longer willing participants and my only question is why. Why? Just why?
But if I could pin down one problem with the film that leads to it ultimately feeling empty it is the celebrity casting but not for the reasons you might think. “Cats” is an ensemble piece and nearly all of the characters are onstage the entire time. When you’re dealing with heavy-hitters like Taylor Swift or James Corden they’re unlikely to be able to stay onset for more than a few days. The film side-steps this problem by having Macavity magic away Rebel Wilson, James Corden, and Ian Mckellen to a boat in the middle of the Thames where they stay for the rest of this film.
Not only does this insertion of plot create a ton of plotholes (why does no one notice or go looking for these missing Cats if they’re slated to perform for Judi Dench cat). It also stops the plot dead in its tracks multiple times and kills the action or in some cases decimates the tone of whole songs. Though I will say defeating a villain by literally tap-dancing him off of a boat is a level of iconic “Rocky Horror” could only dream of.
However because the majority of the score is sung by characters that are only in the film for maybe 20 minutes it becomes challenging for the audience to grow attached to any of the characters besides Francesca Hayward, Robert Fairchild, and Laurie Davidson who to be honest don’t sing much themselves. This robs the piece of the communal feeling that was always very present and vital in the stage show. One thing that I will always praise about the stage version of “Cats” is that in a cast of 27 all of these characters have clear defined relationships with one another that an audience member can identify if they have a keen eye. This element is lost when translated to film and it’s a shame because if you really wanted to give this piece a more structured plot why not explore these dynamics?
Not taking these relationships into account leaves a ton of missed opportunities, the song “Macavity” in the stage play does feel confusing and out of nowhere and giving the song motivation was a good decision and Taylor Swift does give a decent rendition. However because Taylor Swift’s character hasn’t been in the film before this point we feel nothing from her appearance, had she been in the rest of the film we could have registered a sense of betrayal amongst the rest of the cats, maybe even god forbid a genuine conflict that goes beneath the surface level. So the motivation given to this song is still undermined by its execution within the context of the plot. As a stand-alone piece, it’s a good performance but when folded into this film it feels lacking because you find yourself asking “who is this cat and why is she singing?”.
Examples like this leave the characters that were relegated to only dance tracks with little to do in way of character development and keep in mind the bar for character development in “Cats” was already incredibly low. We know how they feel about Grizabella, we know how they feel about Macavity but we don’t know how they feel about each other. This normally wouldn’t matter too much but keep in mind these are the characters the audience ends up spending the most time with and they barely get to speak or sing, in a musical, that’s usually an ensemble piece, why?
This insertion of the plot’s greatest offense is disrupting the emotional throughline multiple times. The most egregious example of this is easily when during Grizabella’s ascent to the “Heavy-side Lair” Idris Elba cat (who at this point looks literally naked) clings to the bottom of Grizabella’s heaven balloon thing and then after losing his grip falls Wiley Coyote style onto a roof of a building below and thus undermining what is typically this piece’s emotional climax. Why?
But if you’re like me and after watching this film you find yourself baffled by every creative that went into making this film fear not because 30 seconds after the previous example Dame Judi Dench breaks the fourth wall for the first time in the entire film to explain to the audience how to speak to a cat while staring directly into the viewer’s soul. Just why?
In conclusion for all of this film’s baffling decisions, I can’t say I was ever bored. And while I continue to shout “why?” into the void I implore everyone to watch this film at least once, if for no other reason then to revel in the iconic mess that could have only been achieved by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, hyper-realistic
Tom Hooper and an incredibly talented cast doing the best with what they were given. But if you can’t muster that watch “Skimbleshanks” cause he should have been the Jellicle choice. He was robbed.