A ‘rowdy’ ‘Cats’ coming to Oriental Theatre
How bad is the movie “Cats”?
“I think my friend put it perfectly when he said it’s a perfectly fine film if you keep your eyes shut,” Mack Shaffer said.
Now Shaffer has to see it again — twice.
It’s his own fault: Shaffer, 27, led a successful online petition drive to get Milwaukee’s Oriental Theatre to schedule “rowdy” screenings of the flop 2019 musical.
The Oriental, 2230 N. Farwell Ave., will show “Cats” at 10 p.m. March 20 and 21, in late-night screenings that encourage audience participation, from talking back to the screen to dressing up as some of the characters on it.
Made for a reported $95 million, “Cats” is the first big-screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s recordbreaking Broadway musical, drawn from poems by T.S. Eliot. Directed by Oscar winner Tom Hooper, its stars include Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, Taylor Swift, James Corden, Jason Derulo and Francesca Hayward.
But when the movie finally arrived — revealing the actors in digitally crafted cat bodysuit-like costumes, that alternately makes the actors look too much like humans or too little — it was savaged by critics and audiences alike.
According to box-office tracker Box Office Mojo, “Cats” has taken in just $27 million, making it one of Hollywood’s biggest disasters of 2019.
Shaffer, who has a degree in film from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, had three words for his reaction to watching the movie: “shock and awe.”
But the movie also had a “so-bad-it’sgood” vibe that reminded him of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” That 1975 musical also failed at the box office, but audiences, delighted by the movie’s campier qualities, turned screenings into happenings, with audience members dressing up as the characters, bringing props from squirt guns to toast (to toss in the air when a character onscreen proposes a toast) and re-enacting scenes along with the movie.
(Not coincidentally, the Oriental has been home to late-night screenings of “Rocky Horror” for more than four decades.)
In the same spirit as “Rocky Horror,” a handful of theaters around the country have been hosting “rowdy” screenings of “Cats,” encouraging audiences to act up as a way to get into the movie.
So Shaffer, who’s seen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” about a dozen times at the Oriental and in the Fox Cities (he was raised in Oakfield), started a petition on Change.org to get the Oriental to schedule a “rowdy” screening of “Cats” in Milwaukee.
The online petition attracted a little interest, Shaffer said, but it really took off when the operator of the Oriental “tweeted to me that ‘if you’ve got 100 signatures, you’ve got yourself a deal.’ “(The petition wound up with 204.)
“I think the idea, even before he hit that number … kind of hit the spot for the Oriental,” said Karina Henderson, marketing director for Milwaukee Film, the nonprofit that runs the Milwaukee Film Festival and manages the 93-year-old Oriental Theatre.
Don’t expect the first late-night screenings of “Cats” at the Oriental to be like “Rocky Horror,” Henderson said. At least not yet.
Audience members are encouraged to talk back to, or sing with, the characters on the screening. And Henderson said Milwaukee Film hopes some moviegoers arrive in cat costumes, too — adding there “might be a couple of surprises” during the screenings.
Shaffer, who said he already bought tickets to both “Cats” screenings, is planning on attending dressed as Bustopher Jones, the top-hat-wearing cat played by Corden in the movie (and spoofed by Corden at this year’s Academy Awards).