My Dudes, ‘Cats’ Is Good
The most mocked movie of the year is totally worth watching
I went to see Cats with my movie club, which consists of two other dudes. The three of us see at least one movie a week, sometimes two. We are punctual. We enjoy snacks. Once the movie is over we amiably discuss it while riding escalators until we are outside, at which point we shake hands and then walk away in different directions like the cons at the end of Oceans 11.
We usually like to see movies at 4 pm, which we have dubbed ‘gentleman’s hour.’ I should mention that this movie club is for gentlemen only but the exact definition of what a gentleman is still an open discussion. So far, the three of us have decided that a gentleman never, ever, texts during a movie and that’s about as far as we’ve gotten. If you agree that a gentleman never ever texts during a movie then perhaps you, too, are a gentleman. If we were accepting applications, I’d suggest you apply. But the time being, my movie club is a triumvirate or, if you’re not into Roman cosplay, a threesome.
I highly suggest, however, starting a movie club of your own. A movie club for gentlemen, who are human beings that have manners, and enjoy snacks, and stand when someone is trying to squeeze by on their way to their seat, and who will firmly deliver a quick and firm “shhh” to anyone who is NOT a gentleman. I know I’m thankful for my gentlemen: it is good to sit in the dark with other people.
The last two movies we’ve seen were Bombshell and Uncut Gems, the former a surprisingly two-dimensional dramatization of sexual harassment run amok at Fox News and the latter a recreational panic attack starring Adam Sandler as an infuriating, yet oddly charming, jeweler with a gambling addiction. A few minutes before the lights went down before Bombshell, a nice lady turned to me and asked ‘Is this Jumanji: The Next Level?’ and I replied: “Oh no, not at all.” The nice lady and her partner then quickly left the theater. My friends and I chuckled because, I suppose, a gentleman will always be happy to tell you what movie is about to play because a gentleman wants everybody to be happy.
The decision to see Cats was unanimous. It would be the movie we’d see almost immediately after the new Star Wars which was enjoyable. That is my opinion. Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker is not a surprising movie. It is like ordering a pizza at a pizza parlor. But it is good pizza.
The other members of the movie club disagreed with me: they were not fond of Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. But gentlemen, no matter your gender, do not care about the opinions of others. A gentleman is content to enjoy the company of their own thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, I’d say a true gentleman respects the opinions of others, even if those opinions are poorly conceived.
This is the closest thing I have to a personal code at the moment.
The big-budget movie adaptation of the beloved Andrew Lloyd Webber musical ‘Cats’ blew my mind. I didn’t know what to expect going in. I remember, vaguely, TV commercials for the Broadway show that use to run all the way down in Virginia during the mid-1980s. The 30-second spots were quick-shots of dancers in cat costumes jumping and squatting and clawing the air and it made New York City seem exotic and dangerous, like a faraway empire of lunatics.
I knew there was a song called ‘Memory’ and it’s not like I’m a stranger to Webber’s work: as a teen, I listened to his Phantom of the Opera, a musical about a singing sex pest in a cape, often.
So it was a surprise to learn that Cats is a synth-heavy, goo-goo-eyed song and dance variety show about a mutant death cult and the movie is both that and a CGI fever dream that mixes Avatar with Thundercats. I’m sorry for what I’m about to write next because I need you to understand it is sincere and not some cheap attempt at earning a snicker or two but I found myself deeply, deeply attracted to Dame Judi Dench, who played a furry, friendly, and dignified Old Deuteronomy, the matriarch of a tribe of opposable-thumbed cat shapeshifters who, once a year, allow one of their kind to die and be reborn.
We don’t see the resurrection part but, you know, that’s a cult for you.
Cats is a movie that is easy to mock and it has been mocked. I was sort of hoping I’d also get to join in on the fun but then the movie went and entertained me for an hour and forty-nine minutes. I guess I wasn’t strong enough to resist nonsense songs about Jellicle cats, whatever a Jellicle cat is. If I had to pick between being a Jellicle cat and being a non-Jellicle cat, I think I’d pick the former? Because at least there seems to be a healthy group sex dynamic?
The movie didn’t grab me from the very beginning. I was a little bored at first but then there was the scene where Rebel Wilson’s cat Jennyanydots slides out of her skin and eats a dancing cockroach with a human face. This moment has become a “traumatizing” viral meme. That whole routine didn’t “traumatize” me, nor did I feel the need to laugh at it, like the young hipster couple sitting next to me who wanted the whole theater to know they were too smart for Cats.
No, the spectacle of Jennyanydots joyfully snacking on a smiling bug was like a wave knocking me over, a sudden and intense baptism. And once that scene, and those cheerful insectoids, had infested my subconscious I knew that I had been fully transported from a movie theater in midtown Manhattan to Pandæmonium itself, the capital of Hell, a wild and noisy dimension.
Cats has been accused of being tacky, and creepy, and plotless and it is all of those things. James Corden, as Bustopher Jones, endures more than one cringe-worthy fat joke. A few songs are absolute bangers but others sound like cocaine snorted by boring people. The cat puns were meowuch.
And yet, I was emotionally-moved by Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella, an old, forgotten cat whose only comfort is her memories. I was delighted every time Idris Elba, as McCavity the ‘mystery cat,’ appeared and disappeared. He was clearly having fun performing out of his comfort zone as a sinister, velvet-skinned cat who can teleport like Nightcrawler from The X-Men. It was nice of Taylor Swift to show up and her cat’s name should have been Cleopatra Garfield.
I know the critics hated Cats, and that’s fine. They are entitled to their opinions. It’s not easy being a critic, you know. Standing up and shouting “I love this thing” or “I don’t love that” takes a kind of courage.
Personally, Cats stunned me. It was unpredictable and demented. I laughed, I cried, I rolled-my-eyes. After one exceptionally daft dance sequence, I even applauded. Cats didn’t highlight the inequities of society or illuminate dark corners of the human condition. It’s not disciplined filmmaking nor a work of genius. It is a sloppy and satisfying confection, albeit one laced with trace amounts of peyote. A slice of silver-screen vaudeville — a little song, a little dance, a joke here, a broken heart there — that I was happy to sit through it.
The experience of watching Cats on the big-screen also sort of answered why this musical was so popular 38-years-ago.
The murder rate in New York City in 1981 was high: 2,100 people died violently in Gotham that year. The city was crime-ridden, filthy, the subway cars painted with graffiti. A trippy rock fantasy based on TS Eliot poems about sexy cats ready to die was a cultural balm. Who needs reality when reality stalks you from the bus stop?
The news right now is pretty bad, actually. This makes it the perfect time to watch a Jellicle movie desperate to distract and committed to a concept that walks a tightrope between brilliant and dopey-as-hell.
I thought Cats was good, my dudes. It was like ordering a pizza at a pizza parlor and getting a slice of cake. This is my opinion. I suppose I could pick the movie apart like a leftover turkey carcass in the fridge but I could do that to any movie, really. It is not a difficult skill to develop, stripping meat off bones. At least the gentlemen of my movie club agree with me on this. The three of us highly enjoyed a movie about sensual jazz cats who wear shoes but no pants.
