I finally saw it. The most notorious film of last year. A film that got reviews so bad, you would think it was one of the worst films ever made. Well, this I had to see. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Cats is the film adaptation of the popular musical, it has an all-star cast and is directed by Tom Hooper. It uses CGI to create human-cat hybrids.
So, if you’ve seen anything about Cats, you’ve seen that its bad and it is indeed very bad. The CGI and character designs are some of the strangest things I’ve ever seen, it is truly bizarre. There is a sequence in the film involving singing mice and cockroaches with human faces. It is something David Lynch would say was too weird. Not only is it weird, but it is not even well done. Sometimes the cats are really small, sometimes human sized, it varies from scene to scene. They all have human hands, not paws. They look more like monkeys than cats to be honest.
The look of the film is a fundamental problem, in a similar way to The Lion King remake. Cats works on the stage because you can use your imagination, they’re not actually supposed to be cats, they’re people dressed as cats and it could work as animation because it is not real. It does not work with CGI. As a result, Cats as a film idea was doomed from the outset as this is a fundamental flaw.
Maybe despite the design, the film would be entertaining? Well, it isn’t, it is incredibly boring, the songs are mostly bland and forgettable and the story is non existent. It is literally just two hours of cats introducing themselves. Add to that Rebel Wilson and James Corden being completely unfunny and you have a recipe for a mind bogglingly terrible experience.
So, would I recommend cats. Honestly, I can’t even recommend it as a so bad its good film as it is just too boring. The weirdness of it gets old quickly and I was really bored by the end. Avoid. 1 Star.
Movie Night 