CATS

Publicity poster for Cats (© Tom Hooper/Andrew Lloyd Webber/Working Title Films/Amblin Entertainment/Perfect World Pictures/Monumental Pictures/The Really Useful Group/Universal Pictures - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The Marmite of movie musicals must surely be Cats (UK readers will understand what I mean by this!). Love it or hate it? I loved it! Was it worth it? Yes indeed, it was well worth the wait for its release, the cinema entry fee, and more recently the DVD – so don't let any catty critic tell you otherwise!

Fleeing from a dismal, rain-filled morning, on 20 December 2019 I escaped into the dry, welcoming solace of my local cinema to see what for me was the long-awaited and much-anticipated movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's smash-hit musical Cats (based upon T.S. Eliot's famous collection of moggy-themed poems entitled Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats) - and what an absolutely mesmerising, spellbinding experience it was! Ironically, Cats had previously never been among my favourite ALW productions, saved for me only by the sublime if deeply sad ballad 'Memory', but that all changed when watching this magical movie musical.

Not long ago, I had read some nowadays-all-too-typical snowflake bewailings that its feline characters appeared too weird, frightening even, with the traditional cat costumes worn in stage productions replaced here with CGI-rendered furry body suits. Frightening indeed, what tosh! No doubt these same bemoaners have no problems sitting through the blood-soaked orgy of gore and mutilation all too frequently presented as 'entertainment' in today's innumerable action movie and horror franchises, yet shriek in shock at the sight of totally UNshocking humanoid felines. What is the world coming to? Anyway, rant over, back to the film.

Bearing in mind that its source material was a series of autonomous poems with minimal links to each another and no actual storyline, when Cats was originally conceived as a stage musical back in the late 1970s its creators had the unenviable task of weaving these poems together somehow in order to yield at least the pretense of a plot. What they ultimately devised, however, was a very intriguing tale in which a diverse gathering of cats took place in London's backstreets one night in every year for a worthy member of their company to be granted a new life, ascending to a feline heaven in the skies called the Heaviside Layer, prior to which each cat enthusiastically and energetically auditions via song and dance in the hope of receiving that precious gift, which will be bestowed by Old Deuteronomy. In the stage version, for obvious reasons there is a limitation upon what can be presented, but no such limitations exist in the spectacular world of CGI.

Consequently, in this dazzling movie version the London backstreet settings of bars, night clubs, a rubbish dump, and the interiors of various cat-owners' homes (each and every one meticulously designed and gorgeous to look at) are rendered gargantuan in size in order to create the impression that all of the performers are indeed only cat-sized, an illusion that works extremely well throughout. And the CGI-coated cats themselves, constituting a tribe known as the Jellicles, are played by a truly stellar cast, including the likes of Sir Ian McKellen (as old Gus the Theatre Cat), Jason Derulo (Rum Tum Tugger), Jennifer Hudson (Grizabella the Glamour Cat) who gets to sing 'Memory' not once but twice (bliss!), ballerina Francesca Hayward (Victoria) a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet who makes her movie debut here, the ubiquitous James Corden (Bustopher Jones), Rebel Wilson (Jennyanydots the Gumbie Cat), Idris Elba (a pantheresque-portrayed, ineffably malevolent Macavity the Mystery Cat), Taylor Swift (as Macavity's equally villainous sidekick Bombalurina - but nothing to do with Timmy Mallett... children's TV fans in the UK will understand!), Ray Winstone (Captain Growltiger), and Dame Judi Dench (Old Deuteronomy).

The 1998 official video/DVD release of a stage performance of Cats, starring among others Elaine Paige as Grizabella and Sir John Mills as Gus (© David Mallet/Andrew Lloyd Webber/Really Useful Films/PolyGram Video/Universal Pictures - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

This last-mentioned casting of Dame Judi as Old Deuteronomy may come as something of a surprise to Cats purists, as in both the original Eliot poem and this musical's traditional theatre staging (including the bestselling official video/DVD movie of one such stage performance, released in 1998) the character has always been male. However, I suspect that Old Deuteronomy's sex-change here may be explained not merely as a nod to diversity but also to the fact that back in 1981 when Cats was first staged, the role of Grizabella had originally been given to Judi but, tragically, just a short time before its debut she tore her Achilles tendon and had to pull out of the show, with a last-minute replacement found in Elaine Paige, and the rest, as they say, is history. But now, finally, she has returned to Cats, albeit in a different role, which seems only fair and fitting.

All of the main characters are portrayed effectively by their respective actors/actresses/dancers, and I feel that some of the less famous members of the cast deserve special mention here too, particularly New York ballet dancer Robbie Fairchild as Munkustrap, Danny Collins as Mungojerrie, and Laurie Davidson as Magical Mr Mistoffelees (although his character, somewhat enigmatic and mystical in the stage versions, is played more for laughs here, as a mostly less-than-successful magician cat until he finally redeems himself via the saving of Old Deuteronomy from Macavity's evil clutches).

But for me the truly outstanding performance without any hesitation whatsoever is Jennifer Hudson's immensely powerful yet heart-wrenchingly poignant rendition of 'Memory'. I never thought that anyone could ever outperform Elaine Paige in this role, but Jennifer takes the tragic figure of Grizabella to an entirely new level (click here to experience her emotional tour de force), augmented, moreover, by the abandoned white kitten Victoria singing a new, haunting song, 'Beautiful Ghosts', co-written specially for this movie by ALW and Taylor Swift (click here for a lyric video of Taylor Swift's original version). 'Memory' has always been one of my all-time favourite musical theatre songs, with its wistful theme of remembering and longing for bygone happier times taking on a much deeper and more personal meaning for me during the past six and a half years by myself. Indeed, I suspect that I must be allergic to this song, because every time I hear it nowadays my eyes start to water, as they most certainly did today, watching and listening alone in the darkness to Jennifer's intensely moving performance.

Bearing in mind that Grizabella is unquestionably the most famous felid in this entire musical, it is nothing if not ironic that the poem 'Grizabella: the Glamour Cat' didn't actually appear in T.S. Eliot's original book. Instead, as revealed in The Really Useful Company's official publication Cats: The Book of the Musical (1981), which I own, it was an unpublished fragment of which only the last eight lines were written, because Eliot thought her history too sad for children, at whom his book was primarily aimed. Also, I remember reading somewhere many years ago that ALW had originally envisaged Cats and also Starlight Express being eventually recreated as animated feature films for release in movie form, but with the advancements in CGI had decided to go down that latter avenue instead with Cats.

In summary: this marvellous movie is quite unlike anything that I've ever seen before, and I am all the more empowered for having seen it. So if you want to stretch your imagination's horizon and view something truly original (as opposed to yet another incarnation of some long-since clapped-out, tediously-regurgitated franchise), I thoroughly recommend that you ignore the tiresome taradiddle that has been trumpeted about this fantastic, fantastical film by blinkered movie buff(oon)s, and enter the extraordinary world of Cats for a couple of hours. It will be time well spent, I assure you.

 

 

Photo of my Cats plush figure from the stage version of Cats (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Finally: here is an official trailer for this awesome movie musical that imho is truly the cat's whiskers!

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

Alongside the Cats publicity poster in my local cinema (© Dr Karl Shuker)