Cats 2019

2020-01-05T23:08:43Z

I'm not an objective critic here. My tendency for obsessing with fictional works slightly preceeded my entering fandom, and it was absolutely a THING before I found the TRHQ2 forums the autumn of the year of our lord 2000.

Because that summer, I attended some municipality-run class on making websites, and I made my very first one about the amazing Sunset Beach. And one afternoon, I had my dad videotape a film from the telly becaues I'd miss it because of said class, and also because I knew I knew I KNEW that I had to see it.

It's probably the most-watched VHS tape I've ever owned. I remember being vaguely confused by the lack of story, but who cares, becaues I was absolutely in love with the music, the dances, the costumes. I was fifteen. I still know the names of probably some 2/3 of all the named cats, even the ones without songs. I've seen a tour production live, I've bough the West End OST, and no derr was I going to see this film.

TL;DR IT IS AMAZING AND I LOVED IT.

For a bit more objectivity: My standard of measurement between an "okay" film and a GREAT film is whether or not I find myself checking the time at any point in it. Depending on genre, a further indication is going to be wether or not I catch myself grinning like an idiot at any point in it.

"La La Land" had my actively regretting the money I paid for the tickets, and that was nominated for bloody Best Picture. But Cats? Oh, Cats had no less than three "oh wow I'm really grinning like an idiot here" moments. And I'm totally going to see it again on Tuesday.

I haven't been reading a lot of the bad reviews this film has gotten, because I was going to see it anyway and I was more than willing to forgive it A LOT. I didn't have a lot of expectations, because adapting "Cats" as a feature film faces two fundamental problems that I did not see how they could overcome:

1. This show is about SHOW, not story. It has like three minutes of plot that's so pitiful that you just wonder why they even bothered in the first place. The theatre audience clearly embraced the musical for what it was (furries singing and dancing), but to court the mainstream film audience, you'll need a mainstream film. And "Cats" just... can't be that.

2. I've long suspected that my love of the theatre is connected to my love of animation. Where mainstream film is mimetic, both the theatre stage and the animated film KNOWS that they'll always be unrealistic, and so they embrace it. They get to exaggarate and blatantly disregard reality and to use symbolism and visual metaphors for carrying their themes, and that's why I love them both. This is why I'll always mentally pat you on the head for insisting that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child sucks because it read like fanfic. Oh sweaty, it might have, but it was a story that wasn't made to be READ in the first place, and I trust that the people giving the play all the awards know more about theatre than your average Harry Potter fan does. (also, you can wrestle Scorpio Malfoy out of my cold, dead hands) "Cats" obviously depends on the same suspension of reality: These aren't cats, they are people in unconvincing cat costumes singing and dancing on two legs. You can sell it on stage, or the film-of-the-stage, as the case might be. You could've sold it as animation, but animated cats would lose 50% of the appeal of the show - the dancing. It is exceedingly difficult to sell it as something working as live action film, so I can only admire the fact that they had the balls to even try.

As the reception of the trailer made clear, the last problem was the BIG one, since it became a meme in the bad way and probably most people less sentimentally hooked on the musical and/or less nerdy about non-mimetic narrative devices than me probably weren't inclined to ever give it the chance in the first place.

What truly surprised me was that the film in fact overcomes both these complaints, to a degree. The plot is still paper-thin, but expanded upon enough to give us somewhat of a narrative: Meet Victoria, who as the story starts is dumped by her owner in what turns out to be the Jellicles' territory. The run-up to the Jellicle Ball is given a twin motive: Introduce Victoria to the Jellicle cats as she observes the cats campaigning to be chosen for a new life, while Macavity lurks in the shadows (for a reason, not just be a troll! omg) The rest of it is pretty much singing and dancing, becaues that's what this is about.

My one criticism of the film would be the visual designs, but not what everyone else is complaining about. I didn't have any uncanny valley moments with neither the faces nor the two-legged dancing, but I did take a bit of issue with how the chorus cats were all a pretty uniform mass here. On stage, they're all distinct and infamously, a lot of them are named. In the film, I honestly don't know if it was Bombalurina and Demeter which sang "Grizabella", because they all looked the sodding same. The furry faces and the human dancing? Psh, I'd forgotten about them two minutes in.

( More commentary, likely presuming you know at least the stage musical but honestly how can you spoil something that doesn't have a story )

comments

Mary Poppins Returns

2019-01-06T22:09:14Z

Me being who I am, it's interesting that the only version of Mary Poppins with which I'm completely familiar is the first novel. I never saw the film until I caught the last half of it on the TV a year ago, and I've seen the beginning of the stage musical (thank you youtube) and listened to the soundtrack.

Going into Mary Poppins Returns thus means I'm going back to a story that has neither particular nostalgia value nor a whole lot of thematic ressonance for me, because I know it as fragments, mainly musical, and not really as a complete story.

Said story is pretty much a remix of the last one. The Banks Family is mildly dysfunctional, The Bank Is Being Mean, Mary Poppins teaches them to fix things by bringing a healthy dose of insanity into their lives. The music is also pretty much a remix of the last one. There's a new "Jolly Holiday" sequence, a new "Step In Time", a new "Let's Go Fly A Kite". There are, of course, numerous smaller callbacks to the first film. Interestingly, Mary Poppins II also borrows from the stage musical: "Cheery Tree Lane" is a musical motif that pops up a couple of times, and Step In Time 2018 also seems to draw more from the stage version than the sixties film. We can debate the merits of trying to be a new Mary Poppins to the extreme where you're just painting a new layer of varnish over the old story. Somehow, the stage adaptation of the story is far more transformative than the sequel is, and I don't think this is doing the sequel any favours. When it recreates the original piece by piece, it lays itself open to the inevitable comparisons - and it doesn't come out on top.

It's a fun spectacle, but suffering a light case of the La La Land syndrome: A flashy display that is too sleek, too polished, and so becomes forgettable afterwards. La La Land was much worse in this regard, mind, and this film is absolutely fun and charming and more memorable. But where the sixties film (or I mean, at least the half of it that counts) is a masterpiece, this one is merely good enough. Being not-as-good as a masterpiece obviously doesn't mean it's bad. I had fun! Unlike La La Land, I wasn't regretting the money I spent on the ticket and the time I spent on watching it. I'll probably get the two-in-one BD that is sure to be released come autumn, so that I can finally see all of the first film too.

Minor hicups:
- Odd casting choice in the dub (if they're going to use period-accurate forms of polite address that the target audience are fourty years too young to remember in use, they could've used the period-accurate sociolectal differences rather than having Jack speak the only dialect considered so embarassing that people stop speaking it when they move away)

- Super awkward attempt at unncessary romantic subplot. It would've just been annoying if they hadn't made him make Those Eyes at both Mary and Topsy and not, I noted, the woman he holds hands with in the final number. Come on, he obviously likes them at least thirty years older.

- The emotional turning point of the film does not come across as believable. Particularly given the fact that children ARE liars and the world would've been a better place if more parents would acknowledge it. Of course, the fool is me hoping for Disney to acknowledge that the nuclear family isn't by essence a beacon of truth and goodness

- is nineteen thirties London really the right place to belt out an ending moral about how the only way things can go from here on is upwards?

comments

september's coming soon

Cats 2019

Mary Poppins Returns