I'm not saying Cats is the worst movie of 2019.I'm not saying Cats is not the worst movie of 2019. I'm just not saying anything. Not until I reveal my whole list on Monday, anyway.
But I am saying that if there was a chance it would be the worst movie of 2019, I had to see it.
You gotta see the best, and you gotta see the worst.
People who expressed surprise that I wanted to see Cats surprised me. "Are you kidding me? I can't wait!"
Trainwrecks of this alleged magnitude don't come along every day. The movie business is a tightly controlled one where people are much more likely to be frustrated by a movie's numerous concessions to mass tastes (something like Rise of Skywalker, or so say its haters) than its staggering ineptitude. When staggering ineptitude is on the table, I eat that shit up.
So I went to Cats on Wednesday night.
Yes, it is staggeringly inept. But it's so tedious that I don't know if I can recommend a viewing even for those who are in for the trainwreck.
A couple giant demerits that I want to point out, though.
- This show, in general. What the hell is this show? I can summarize the plot as follows:
"Hello! My name is Rum Tum Tugger."
"Oh really? My name is Grizzabella."
And there you have it.
- There are two songs about cats who are fat. Not one, but two.
- There is something incredibly obscene about watching human cats lick themselves. In fact, anything related to the cat physicality is just wrong.
- You are not going to win another Oscar by doubling Anne Hathaway's emotional output from Les Miserables, Jennifer Hudson.
- How the hell does Macavity make himself disappear? Shit, there goes realism.
- This reminded me of something I thought of a couple years ago that I'd love to introduce into the culture, a little quiz called "Cats character or Pokemon?" And then the word "Skimbleshanks" would come up, and you had to choose which.
- Steady your damn camera, Tom Hooper. Jesus Christ.
- I was joined in my theater by four other patrons, sitting in two pairs. With about 30 minutes left in the movie, one of the pairs walked out. Five minutes later, the other pair walked out. Now alone in the theater, I turned on my phone and started posting and messaging people about Cats.
- Note: This is not the first time I have watched a movie by myself in the theater -- see this post about Yoga Hosers -- but it is the first time I've watched a movie alone because my fellow viewers abandoned me.
- I told my wife before I left that there was a 3% chance I would get swept up in it and love it.
Uh uh.
Okay, I'm done.
2 comments:
We've already chatted about Cats a bit, but I wanted to quickly say that if you are referring to what I think you are with "There are two songs about cats who are fat. Not one, but two," that is a movie foible uniquely rather than a show one. Rebel Wilson's song actually is in no way about her character being fat, she's just apparently incapable of playing characters as anything other than "fat, haha, so funny." As a minifan of the musical, hearing she was cast in that role made me want to throw something. The *actual* character traits of that cat? Propriety. Current working actress least likely in the whole world to demonstrate propriety? Rebel Wilson.
It's such a small thing but it irritates me so much because every cat has their OWN just-one character trait, dang it, you don't just double the worst one and give it to two cats! That's just madness!
Ha ha. Madness indeed, and tone deafness. Thanks for the comment Hannah. I truly believe Hooper's success with The King's Speech was a fluke as everything else he has touched as been, er, bad.
Post a Comment