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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 )
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 )
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