j* movie reviews 2020

Cats (2019)

You've got to relax your eyes, my friends, and let the waves of furry thighs wash over you.

This is my first ever Cats experience and you know, I didn't find it as tragic or trash as everyone seems to think. But it is a quite different experience than a lot of cinema, so if you're looking for your cookie-cutter structure or you standard character arc, you're going to be disappointed. And I get the impression a lot of people are disappointed. So go in prepared and you might well be pleasantly surprised.

Firstly I think this thing is a lot like a Magic Eye, you know, one of those psychedelic images that you look *through* to see a strange 3D image appear. A schooner might be a sailboat, but you still have to let it come to you out of the distorted, colourful mess. It's like that with Cats, you have to relax your eyes and stop focussing. Just look at the furry mess on screen with your pupils loose, your mind open to something and eventually it will all start to come together.

Don't think about the size of their ears, the prehensileness of their tails or whether or not they should be wearing sneakers, nor any other of the thousand wardrobe conundrums this brings up. I spent a bit of time doing this and I can tell you it didn't help. Relax, meditate nothing, but let the cats flow over you, flow through you.

Thighs are really weird, you know. We don't usually see them in such intense variety, let alone covered in a veneer of fur. You see so many thighs in this film and it feels a bit strange. We're just not used to so much thigh action on screen, and I'd hazard a guess most of us aren't that used to modern-dance leg waving. Or cat-humans waggling their tongues, or licking themselves or each other. It's all jarring. But relax. It's harmless. It's a groundbreaking musical-theatre experiment that has just kept rolling for nearly forty freaking years. There's clearly something to it.

Another thing. This is levels beyond musical. I feel in a musical they like to tell a little bit of story, then sing a song, then back to some plot, song, plot, song, plot, repeat, repeat, repeat. This is so dedicated to form it has decided it will all be song. Every inch. Every moment. Every cat. I read an early description of the development of the musical that said it was a "Song Cycle" and I think this remains apt. This film is a series of songs based on a super flexible central premise: one cat will be chosen for a better life.

It's like a two hour ad for cat adoption. And nearly every song is just about a cat, or cats, that could have another life. Who they are, what they do, what they're like. It's about 200% character profiles in song. As someone who did adopt a stray recently, I found the pleading for cat acceptance towards the end to be quite tugging on the heartstrings. And if forced to choose, I am a dog-person.

You don't need to take drugs before seeing it, because this appears to have been made by humans on drugs. There are stacks of things that are never resolved or explained to any great extent and I can't help but feel that is how actual cats sometimes feel. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Why does that one appear and disappear in a puff of glitter? We'll never know and our lives can roll on quite contentedly.

Give the catnip a shot.

J* gives it 3 stars.

PS. I saw some people complain about the CGI and we know it's been re-released with modified CGI. But I saw some people whinging about blurry un-rendered blobs in the background - and that's unfair - they're just using really close focus on foreground cats so the backgrounds are indistinguishable. I guess a lot of superhero movie renderings have spoilt us with the idea that everything in shot can be crystal clear with their over-rendering, but this isn't a fail, it's just more legit film tech.

PPS. On that note, I found this no harder to get into than Avengers EG or IW. In fact, if you're a super-hero flick fan and you've ever wondered how a superhero movie appears to an outsider, Cats could give you that experience. Weird costumes, strange powers, and everyone seems enthralled and in on a joke you can't quite understand.