It has a star-studded cast, but Cats movie a head-scratcher
Look what the Cats dragged in — a cinematic musical with hairballs
Someone put a lot of work into Cats. The time and effort spent on computer-generated ears alone must have been enormous. And you should put an equal effort into seeing it. Here’s what you need to do:
First, get a bottle of your favourite holiday schnapps. Next, go see The Rise of Skywalker. (Trust me: It’s great!) Then, every time someone pulls out a lightsaber or mentions the planet Exogol, take a sip.
THEN go see Cats. You will now be in the perfect frame of mind for it. The scene with live humans playing dancing cockroaches, some of them eaten by cats, will cause mild astonishment rather than full-on revulsion.
And you won’t feel left out when everyone in the movie starts snorting catnip.
Honestly, can you imagine if you’d asked Nobel Laureate T.S. Eliot before his death in 1965 to predict which of his works would one day become both a West End and Broadway play by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and then a cinema musical directed by Tom (Les Misérables) Hooper?
He’d pick an actual play, like Murder in the Cathedral or The Cocktail Party. “Nope.” Then maybe an epic poem like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock? “Nuh-uh.”
And then you’d tell him it was Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and he’d scratch your eyes out.
And could you blame him?
The movie, like the stage musical, revolves around a group of alley cats vying to be chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer, some sort of vaguely Valhalla-esque realm, though it’s also my pet name for the cinema snack bar.
They include such felines as Gus The Theatre Cat (Sir Ian Mckellen), Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo) and Bustopher Jones (James Corden). Of particular import are Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), who decides which cat goes to the Heaviside Layer; magical Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson); evil Macavity (Idris Elba); his apologist Bombalurina (Taylor Swift); and Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson), who gets to belt out the show-stopping melody Memory.
Also in the cats — I mean cast — is Francesca Hayward, principal dancer in London’s Royal Ballet. She plays Victoria, meant to be an audience stand-in, I presume, since she says little but gets a lot of camera time to stare wideeyed at the other cats. It’s like watching someone watching the movie, which is itself like watching cats dry.
Cats runs an hour and 50 minutes, but be warned: That’s almost 13 cat-hours. That’s a long time for a film in which plot spoilers are impossible, due to the fact that there’s no actual plot. I could tell you that my favourite scene was the one where Corden’s character takes out a rival cat with a coughed-up hairball and you would think I was making it up. I’m not. Go see Cats. I dare you!
Full disclosure: I saw the London production of Cats in the early ’90s and enjoyed it immensely. I also relished the recent Mirvish production in Toronto, which runs until
Jan. 5. But there’s something magical about watching the cast cavort in the aisles, applauding their live performance, and hitting the bar at intermission. The movie contains all the weirdness of the original, but none of the proximity.
And while the songs are superb — Mckellen does a great job with his number, and Hudson really sells Memory — the costumes or special effects or whatever you want to call them are distracting, falling into what I can only call the Uncatty Valley. The giant sets don’t even have a consistent scale, so in some scenes the performers look almost human-sized, while in others they’re thinner than a railroad track. Cats looks like a sequel to Avatar, set on the Planet of the Furries.
There’s an odd term in every version of Cats that gets repeated often in song and dialogue, and that’s Jellicle. Jellicle cats, the Jellicle ball, the Jellicle choice, etc. It turns out that “Jellicle cats” is a corruption of “dear little cats.”
To fully hear it, it helps to have a British accent in you. And some schnapps.
Plot spoilers are impossible, due to the fact that there’s no actual plot.
LONDON British ballerina Francesca Hayward is getting ready to take a leap from stage to the silver screen, with a star turn in the film version of the musical Cats.
This holiday season, the Royal Ballet principal dancer will be appearing in a production of Coppelia at London’s Royal Opera House.
At the same time she will be appearing as the cat Victoria in the movie based on British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage show.
“When I was younger, I used to dance to lots of ballet videos ... but amongst my favourite videos would be Cats,” Hayward said.
“I would invite my friends round to play with me and I would put Cats on and I would always be Victoria.”
Victoria has an expanded role in the film, in which the actors’ faces are visible and their bodies are covered in computer-generated fur. Hayward will also be singing a new tune, Beautiful Ghosts. The song, written by co-star Taylor Swift and Lloyd Webber, is nominated for a Golden Globe.
“I’ve always had roles in my head ... that I thought I would get to play, maybe, possibly, but I have to say, I never really thought that I’d ever be Victoria, since that’s not in our ballet repertoire,” Hayward, 27, said.
“I found the singing really scary ... I had a very surreal day on set where they asked me to go to the music room and Taylor was there, and she basically sang me the solo that I would sing in the film ... And at the end of it, she said ‘Is that OK?’ I said: ‘Yeah, that’s OK. I’ll do my best with it.’”
Nairobi-born Hayward, who began dancing at age three, trained at the Royal Ballet School, graduating into the company nearly 10 years ago. She has performed in The Nutcracker, Frankenstein, Swan Lake and Don Quixote, among others, and is also currently rehearsing for Onegin.
Hayward, who featured on the British Vogue “Forces for change” cover when Meghan, wife of Prince Harry, guest edited the magazine’s September issue, has also starred as Juliet in the film Romeo and Juliet: Beyond Words.
“On stage I have to amplify some of my emotions with my back or make something a little bit more obvious because my audience might be very far away from me, or very high up and find it harder to read what I’m trying to express,” Hayward said. “On camera everything has to be sort of toned down a lot more but read very well.”