Cats was a movie I went to see right after Christmas. I paid about $15 of my own money for a ticket to go and watch Cats, so then I would be able to review Cats on The Blog Complainer for all of you to understand what I felt about CATS!!

I have been looking forward to seeing this failed investment since I first saw the trailer back when Ford v Ferrari came out. I heard the negative reactions but I was completely unprepared for the terrifying designs of all the Cat people. Now that I have seen the movie, Cats continues to surprise me with its bafflingly bad decisions. Throughout the movie I envisaged some Hollywood committee unanimously agreeing that copying the live action Wind in the Willows is the way to go and there shall be no backlash whatsoever.

I should note that I have not seen the stage show. I love going to a good show but Cats was never one of them. It being based on a stage show is one of my big issues with this movie as it feels like a stage show. 95% of this movie is characters breaking out into song, not a bad idea in theory if only there was an interesting story to go with it. We’re thrown into this world of weird hybrid Cat people where a newcomer is instantly thrust into the lives of several different singing cats. These cats range from forgettable to utterly repulsive. The songs start to feel very repetitive because most of them introduce a new character which feels pointless as the characters usually then disappear for the rest of the movie. The volume of characters makes it’s pretty hard to form an attachment to anyone.

Some of the songs also felt like padding as there are long sections of cats doing flips and stuff, you know stuff you expect to see at a live performance not in a two hour movie. The songs range from pretty good to ear bleedingly dreadful. The Rum Tum Rugger is my least favourite song as it doesn’t fit with the tone of the movie at all. It also doesn’t help that it’s right next to two equally terrible songs. I guess the better songs in the movie are the ones done by Taylor Swift or Jennifer Hudson because they’re talented singers and they aren’t James Corden. Ugh!

Because there aren’t many talkie scenes a good chunk of the cast are singers so I can’t really comment on their acting range, but not that it really matters as every actor in this movie is BAD!! Judi Dench, an actor I usually adore, feels like she’s phoning it in. Rebel Wilson and James Corden are absolutely terrible and easily the most unbearable characters in the movie because of their really poor attempts for a laugh. Get used to those cat puns and one of them falling over because they’re fat! This hasn’t been a good year for Idris Elba as he basically does a parody of his stupid character from Hobbs and Shaw. The film makes such a big deal of how scary and dangerous his character is, but when he shows up he’s a joke!

This movie clearly doesn’t know what it wants. It’s either some artsy slick emotional musical thing or a goofy unfunny happy musical kids movie. This makes me think back to the committee of people wanting to appease everybody by throwing in celebrities, a happy and emotional story and realistic animation to show off how great their technology is because that’s what animation has boiled down to and all these ideas end up falling on top of themselves because none of it works!

If you thought how the Cats looked in the trailers was bad then guess what, it’s much worse when you actually see the movie! It’s so embarrassing that the people behind the movie thought this was suitable to put in cinemas as it feels really unfinished. These Cat people prance around a moving camera and create a really ugly blur. There are many shots where you can notice errors in the CGI like some shots where their fur is non-existent and it’s just blobby colours and some cats in the background look like they were ripped from some early 2000’s video game. The biggest incompetency on display is that they completely forgot to animate over the actors’ human hands. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Judi Dench’s wedding ring on her normal human hands. If there weren’t other people in my cinema I might have burst out laughing.

This might not happen to you if you see it now as apparently they’re releasing a patch for the movie fixing errors like non-cat hands You know, a patch you would expect to see from a video game. I doubt it would change much, but the thought of it immediately puts a big grin on my face. Stuff like that kind of makes me appreciate it as a “so bad it’s good” movie. I can also see myself enjoying the movie better if I view it in that light.  For example, there are many supposedly emotional moments where the blank expressions of the inexperienced actors gave me a reason to smirk.

Let’s wrap this up, Cats is a mess of a movie created by a group of super aliens from another planet who don’t understand what human beings like in a movie. There are some good ideas, some okay aspects, some terribly awful parts and some embarrassingly funny flaws that result in my mixed feelings for Cats. Either way it’s an embarrassing movie that you could passionately hate or ironically enjoy. I’m giving it a 1 or 2 out of 10, but I should note I would watch this over Rise of Skywalker. If you want to give this a go then go ahead if not then I would look for something else to watch these holidays.

This was the most fun I had reviewing in awhile and I’ll be interested to hear what others think of Cats. Hoped you all had a good Christmas and stayed tuned as I’ve got one more post to end this year off properly. I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.