Cats is the new Xanadu, or maybe Glitter

There are a lot of bad films made in Hollywood; some boring, some mis-cast, some with insipid scripts.  Every once in a blue moon (okay, more often than that) a film comes along that manages to screw up absolutely everything, despite being under the control of supposedly competent artists.  When this happens, the critics pull out their knives and strip the offending movies down to its bones, and then they eat the bones.

Such a film is Cats.

Most of the complaints have been about the special effects, which were rushed despite being innovative, and resulted in the studio actually releasing a new version of the movie a week after its opening with “improved” visual effects.  The technical problems began early in the production process, but the film was not pulling a 32 rating at Metacritic and a 17% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes because Dame Judi Dench’s hand was visible in one scene.

The problem with adapting the hit stage musical Cats into a successful film starts with one fundamental truth about the play, which was succinctly summed up by a theater-savvy friend of mine who said, “Worst.  Musical.  Ever.”  The show has no plot.  It has no interesting characters.  And the two-plus hour production features exactly one memorable song, the eleven o’clock number Memory.  Other than that, it’s just a bunch of cats in a junkyard.

It’s not like this was a secret.  The series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a show steeped in Broadway musical tradition, regularly made asides about how bad the musical was (“I would never do Cats.  It has no plot.”).  Then the show did an entire episode that was a parody of Cats but was also about the main character’s yeast infection, leading to a singing number by a character identified as “Itchy Cat.”  The main character eventually says, "This sucks more than the song about what makes a Jellicle cat, and then it just goes on to describe literally any cat."  The parody is only slightly sillier than the actual musical Cats.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt also took a shot at the musical Cats.  In the show, wannabe Broadway actor Titus chaperones a group of kids to see the musical, then has an idea; he dons a self-made costume at intermission and gets up on stage in Act Two and improvises inane lyrics.  He discovers that he is now part of the cast, and that the show was never “written” by anyone and all the songs are made up by people who came out of the audience and just started singing on stage.

So, the material has been mocked for a long time, which makes the decision to mount an earnest adaptation a peculiar choice.  But it could still be adapted into a film version that would be adored by all the people who loved Cats on stage, right?  It did run for 16 years on Broadway, so it can’t be THAT bad.

Unfortunately, everything that led to Cats’ record-breaking run on Broadway has to do with the staginess of the production.  There is no plot, it has virtually no book, actors are buried under cat fur, but the stage version does have a fantastic set and kid-friendly cat costumes and make-up.  The set, consisting of oversized items in a junkyard, appeals to smaller human beings (kids), and the face paint of whiskers is something every child can seek to adopt.  But these aspects of the play can’t be replicated on film where digital effect replace the oversized sets and cat fur.

I tend to agree that having seen the play will not make you want to see the film version.  Kids will not find the literal cat look as appealing as make-up wearing stage cats, and again there is no plot and the songs all suck except for one.   So who ever thought this was a good idea in the first place should be questioned.

The studio is insisting that Cats will find an audience, but that is hard to believe as the TRAILER for the movie was derided when it was released.  AV Club named the Cats trailer the 10th worst thing on the internet in 2019.  I understand that by the time the trailer comes out your sunk costs mandate releasing the film no matter what, but if you can’t produce a trailer that shows the movie in a good light maybe you should immediately start looking for ways to cut your losses.

I am feeling some schadenfreude as the director, Tom Hooper (who had previously primarily worked in television), beat out auteur David Fincher for a Best Director Oscar in 2011, winning for the mediocre The King’s Speech over Fincher’s brilliant visualization of Aaron Sorkin’s astonishing script for The Social Network.  He had additional success with his next film, the Oscar winning adaptation of the stage musical Les Miserables.  But, to mix a metaphor, Cats may be his Waterloo.

With a budget of $100 million and nearly as much spent on advertising, Cats’ failure at the box office will have a major impact on the studio's bottom line..  As for Tom Hooper’s future as a director, the question is will people blame the film’s failure on his vision, or the technical problems.  Maybe another studio will trust him with a big budget film again; maybe he’ll find himself back working on television.