Cats is me, I am Cats
In the last 23 years, the Cats musical has played many roles for me. It’s raised me out of depression, led to my financial ruin, and is woven into the fibers of my very being. Let me tell you a tale — or a “tail,” if you will. From stage to movie musical, Cats has been with me a very long time.
Two years before the Broadway recording of Cats made it to the small screen, a pudgy-faced, child version of me begged her completely uninterested parents for tickets to a night at the national tour run of Broadway’s (at the time) longest running musical.
Several obstructed-view discount tickets later, I’d watched tiny dancing figures sing their way around a junkyard set, professing that the lives and personalities of cats are as varied as those of humans. They had professions and close-knit ties to society — in both the world of men and the secret world of cats.
The fact that all of the cats belonged to some strange resurrection cult aside, these cats had a pretty good thing going on. I wanted in.
I went to the library and borrowed the vinyl record containing the original London cast’s performance. I bought T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, and read it religiously. I begged my parents for voice lessons to perfect my rendition of “Memory.”
Cats is the reason I have an associate’s degree in music, assuring my twenties would be spent in a millennial tailspin of bad financial decisions. And I love it. I love it with every atom in my body!
The anti-hype is real
Cats is no stranger to hate. The musical barely has a plot, and mostly consists of episodic songs describing it’s various cat characters. It’s about 90 percent interpretive dance, which has never been particularly popular with the average Joe.
Moreover, its actors are covered in glam-rock makeup, lycra, and yak fur — arguably not a fashion forward prospect, even in the 80s and 90s.
Making fun of Cats is played out; it’s a common enough recurrence in the theater world to have become a trope. So when a movie was announced, no one was surprised that the overall reaction wasn’t glowing. The scale of the distaste, though — that was surprising.
It’s enough to make a Cats fan cry. Or yowl, perhaps.
I heard about the Cats movie while reading articles about the CG trash fire of a trailer for the upcoming Sonic: The Hedgehog film.
Both films had strange takes on anthropomorphic animals. One decided to redesign the problematic character from scratch. The other one doubled down.
At the time, I had the same reaction as pretty much everyone on the internet:
“Oh god. The human faces. The deep, unsettling uncanny valley. Who greenlit this eldritch monstrosity!?”
The movie, once properly released in theaters, was unfinished. Many early viewers reported that the post house seemed to have given up on the CG effects partway through the movie.
Just before Christmas, Cats was given a patch, fixing the portions of the movie which lacked CG effects. This set a weird new precedent in the digital era of film distribution, as the patch was rolled out to movie projectors across the nation automatically and without theater owners’ direct consent.
The initial screener was so bad, they didn’t even manage to “fix it in post.” Instead, they decided movies are the new video games, and updated the film after it’d been seen by its first wave of customers.
I knew all of this going in, and expected a glorious train-wreck. And yet.
Alamo Drafthouse came to the rescue and made my Cats viewing experience one to remember.
Remember the calico!
Alamo Drafthouse, for the uninitiated, is a chain of theaters at which moviegoers can order restaurant food and alcoholic beverages before and during a movie viewing. The food and drinks are brought to tiny personal-sized tables attached to the customers’ reclining armchair seats.
The Alamo sometimes holds special showings of arthouse films, anime movies, and cult classics. They decided, based on how ridiculous the whole premise of the Cats movie is at face value, to give it the “Rowdy Screening” treatment.
A “Rowdy Screening” at the Alamo follows Rocky Horror Picture Show rules, for the most part. Audience members laugh, clap, scream, meow, hiss, and generally cause a ruckus throughout the screening. This is encouraged by staff, who only dip in to ask guests to tone it down if they start talking in full sentences over the film.
The Cats movie also inspired themed alcoholic beverages served out of miniature cat bowls. Lapping with the tongue was the theater-suggested method of ingestion, but drinking like a normal human being wasn’t off-limits to less adventurous patrons.
This is the ideal setting at which to watch Cats. Those who don’t live near an Alamo Drafthouse should wait for the physical and/or streaming release, load up on alcohol and snack-food, grab some buddies, and make a party out of their Cats viewing.
Just be sure you’re not keeping your neighbor up late with your caterwauling.
The myth, the legend, the movie adaptation
Cats is not a good movie. It is, however, an amazing experience.
The first ten minutes are spent watching a human almost certainly murder a kitten by throwing her quite hard, wrapped in a pillowcase, directly onto the hard concrete floor of a London alleyway.
Having lost one of her nine lives, this feisty kitten isn’t out of trouble yet, for she’s surrounded by strange cats belonging to a secret society or something.
Then in a few minutes, everyone’s dancing to dubstep beside a fountain in the middle of what should be a busy street, humans seemingly having disappeared from the face of the earth.
No living things exist in this space, except for weird, human shaped cats with human-shaped faces. Their size is inconsistent with props and scenery. They scurry about, sometimes pretending to walk on all-fours, other times completely bipedal.
Mostly, they dance — ballet and street dance are both options for these human silhouettes with tails and whiskers. Two cats are wearing sneakers. Several cats wear jackets. One cat carries around its own tap shoes.
One cat repeatedly removes her own skin and fur, to reveal the same skin and fur underneath, this time covered by a figure-skating costume.
Cats makes bold choices, from omitting gravity where inconvenient, to human-skin textured hands on cats, to shifting instrumentation throughout songs, to human noses and nostrils on cats, to magical teleporting ninja cat powers.
Once the Cats movie makes a choice, it doesn’t back down. Cats doesn’t care if you think it’s the hokiest thing in existence; it knows what it wants and it’s here to have a good time.
And with every unexpected direction the Cats movie turns, the audience howls with laughter, yowls with excitement, and sings along with gusto.
So, who is this for?
Regular movie-goers will probably not appreciate anything about Cats.
Meme-lords with easy access to alcohol will roll in their seats laughing at the insanity laid bare before them.
Furries may be a mixed bag. Some will appreciate the sexual tension between Every Cat and Every Other Cat, but others will be put off by the weirdly human-esque aesthetic.
(Those worried about the sexual tension between Every Cat and Every Other Cat for the purposes of children in the theater need not be overly concerned. Despite the multitude of weird crotch shots in the opening 20 minutes of the film, nothing is ever overt enough to cross into truly dicey territory.)
Enthusiasts of the stage musical will find their favorite numbers mostly intact, and probably won’t hate the one new song, which gives a bit of context to Victoria’s fascination with Grizabella.
Still, those who take the show seriously as an Artistic Achievement are probably better off re-watching the 1998 cast recording than seeing this film.
Musical fans who don’t take the stage production overly-seriously, however, are in for a treat.
The Jellicle Choice
Much as Jellicle cats are described as figures to be Taken Seriously — even bowed to when met on the street — it’s obvious that their fickle natures don’t really lend themselves to such reverence and rigidity.
Plus, they’re always down for a good time.
So as long as you’re expecting a party and not High Theater, you’ll have a good time with Cats.
Seriously, though. Pour some booze in a miniature cat bowl. It really heightens the experience.
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