Wright or Wrong: Cats

Adapting the long running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about a group of quirky alley cats gathering for a ritual to determine which of them will be chosen to have a second chance at life after death, "Cats" is destined, for better or worse, to be the single weirdest project to ever be granted a 9 figure budget from Hollywood.

The star-studded cast is helmed by "Les Miserables" director Tom Hooper — who likely landed this job due to its subsequent success. But while "Les Miserables" wasn't without its valid rationale for being polarizing, "Cats" boils down to a visually-bonkers and nonsensical stream of actors projecting all over the place, barely stitched together by 2 hours of nonstop music and dance numbers permeated by sexual over and undertones from start to finish that feel like they would be more impressive to watch live in person than on screen.

"Cats" is a full blown, disaster of a movie almost from start to finish. There's no way to sugar coat that.

Any theatre geek will tell you that of course a "Cats" movie looks like weirdly flamboyant and slightly off putting furry bait — because it aesthetically is flamboyantly weird and slightly off putting furry bait.

The source material in question is an interpretive, spectacle driven, musical with no designated leads or actual dialogue. Almost 3 quarters of the soundtrack is character-centric introductions commenting on the personality quirks of cat breeds and their psychology, based on a book of non-narrative poetry by T. S. Eliot. It barely functions as narrative because no version of it has ever needed to exist with actual plot in mind.

That's not to say that you can't carve a strong story out of "Cats" but it would take an active effort and a willingness to reinterpret the material to do so. Every once in a while all the acting talent gets to flex their chops, but the rhythm has to ramp right back up.

Ian Mckellan gets a sweet little melancholic number about remembering theatrical glory days gone past while Laurie Davidson and Francesca Hayward develop a sweet understated bond between number communicated almost exclusively through body language but these bits of subtlety all play out in isolation from the movie's stillborn narrative.

Taking the biggest hits from this are Idris Elba's menacing antagonist, McCavity, who's design loses all sense of menace when he's forced to abandon the shadows to take the spotlight for the second most awkwardly sexual music number of the movie, and Jennifer Hudson's washed up and regretful Grizabella, who commands the screen when she's allowed to embody her role, but has to be shunted to less focus in order for the film to chew through the workload it bit way too much off of. As a movie, the results are alienating and mind boggling at worst and perversely fascinating at best.

Where I'm ultimately split on "Cats" however, is as somebody with an unhealthy obsession with experimenting with storytelling mechanics as well as somebody who's a sucker for theatre ambiance and musicals, "Cats" included.

Always messy but never boring, the film consistently elicits a reaction out of you whether it's the one you want or not but taken once more as a stage show that just happens to have the resources of film lens and production value at its disposal, it's not that bad of a ride. At the very least, it's a fascinating one, watching actors of film and television figuring out how to work in a medium not their forte yet in their comfort zone and willing to put themselves out there in weird ways.

I don't even want to slap this type of enjoyment as "so bad it's good" so much as "alternative." Hooper directs every scene with a level of insane confidence that demands your attention even if you're likely to lose track of what's going on if you try to watch it as a traditional narrative and while I can't say that the dedication to breaking every common sense rule of film adaptation has made for a good film in any sense of the word, I can say that it's just weird enough that I have a genuine love for its existence built solely for its willingness to be this gonzo, on this scope, with this level of acting talent, on a budget of over $100 million.

This is the hardest review I've had to write in years. I could get several articles out of deconstructing everything that doesn't work about this movie and just as many on why none of them matter, which makes it really hard to evaluate on any traditional metric of quality or discern who to recommend it to.

"Cats" is the type of high profile disaster that will be in film discourse for years to come.

For its destined cult following however, of which I am firmly a part of, existing in the crossroads between theatre buffs finding enjoyment in a new telling of a fluffy but classic show and the critical analyst that needs to know what a day of "cat school" with Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Ian Mckellan, and Judy Dench looks like, I salute it as one of the most unforgettable films I have seen this decade.

2 out of 5