God still lives in fear of the Cats movie
The 2019 musical was so dreadful Andrew Lloyd Webber bought a dog afterward
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A still from Cats (2019). (Universal Pictures/ Press Photo)
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Do you ever wonder why the Lord doesn’t contact us very often? Is it because he lives in fear of what he’s created?
This seems to be the case when it comes to the 2019 film Cats, a cinematic adaptation of the stage play by the same name. It’s a musical which showcases talking human-like felines, which may have seemed like an okay idea on paper, but when portrayed on the actual screen — let’s just say that the final product was something that took the world by storm.
Let me make this clear: musicals are a welcome genre in cinema, when done right. We need that dose of dopamine, and the voice that cheers us up and says, “everything’s going to be alright.”
When they are done wrong however, the whole viewing experience is like one massive cringey memory from primary school that won’t leave your mind. The Cats film is like that memory, except deep-fried in liquid meth, and with the awkwardness dialed up by 87 per cent.
We’ve all seen dancing, animated cats thanks to old Disney films. Whenever you think of such a thing, you imagine at least feline cats, or rather creatures that look very much like cats and can be identified as such without much difficulty.
In the Cats film, there are human-like faces on top of feline bodies. We’re not talking about anime cat-people, this is literally human-cats, and it’s just as dreadful as it sounds. The way they walk, talk, act, their demeanors, those god-awful faces, everything about this film seems like a never-ending fever dream. As if paying tribute to its own utter silliness, there’s even a scene where an older cat character gets launched into the air before landing on his balls atop a bar.
If this was an ambitious project made back in 2003, I sincerely believe that this would be received less harshly, but the reality is that very few wanted this, especially the creator of the original play, Andrew Llyod Webber, who reportedly bought a dog after the movie premiered, probably as a reprieve from the horrors he witnessed.