BEFORE: I'm up in Massachusetts for just a weekend, a little break before the new part-time job starts, because after that, I may be busy on weekends again, and who knows when I'll be able to sneak away and visit my parents, maybe not until Thanksgiving. This was part of my campaign to clear films off the living room DVR, the "movie DVR", before leaving, so it won't fill up. This is an ongoing problem, because I can only clear movies from certain channels off the DVR, by dubbing them to DVD, and some premium channels run a signal with the movie that makes duplication impossible. So the Movie DVR is at 70% full and holding, I can't seem to get it any less full without watching the movies, thus freeing them for deletion, but thanks to my system, that takes proper planning, and time. And while I'm doing that, I keep finding movies that I haven't seen, so the damn thing fills up again, and so on ad infinitum. Meanwhile, the bedroom DVR, the "TV DVR", is filled with about 55 episodes of "Chopped", I've cleared off as much of every other show as I can, but watching "Chopped" together used to be our bedtime routine, and that's fallen by the wayside, so I don't know how I'm going to free up some more space there.
James Corden carries over again from "The Prom". I promise you, there is a method to my madness, or at least it's the other way around. And I switched the last two movies around so I could give a Birthday SHOUT-out to Jennifer Hudson, born September 12, 1981. So, happy 40th, Jennifer, sorry I can't work "Respect" into the chain at this time - I saw bits of the film while I was working at the movie theater, but I was too busy to watch the whole thing. I'll get there, I've only scratched the surface so far on the films of 2021.
THE PLOT: A tribe of cats called the Jellicles must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life.
AFTER: This is a good reminder that Broadway is coming back, even the "Hamilton" lottery is running again, but ONLY for vaccinated people. Don't even bother trying to see a Broadway show if you haven't got the shot, you'll be turned away, because NYC is a right-thinking city, and we all know the only way we're all going to get through this thing is to encourage everybody to get the COVID vaccine. And if that doesn't work, we're going to try DIS-couraging NOT getting the vaccine, maybe that will work. Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, the pandemic is worse than ever, gee, I wonder why? What could POSSIBLY be going wrong with letting people's personal freedoms outweigh the common good, which is basically just a free pass for the virus to run rampant, yet the politicians are doubling down by forbidding mask mandates and vaccine mandates, while insisting that nothing's wrong with that. OK, great, just remember that you kept your personal freedoms, but when you caught COVID, you infected your granny and now she's six feet under. Good luck sleeping at night, and living with your damn self going forward, but no, no, congratulations on keeping your personal freedoms and not making any sacrifices for the common good. Life is full of lessons, it turns out.
I put this film off just about as long as I could, because it looked absolutely ridiculous - AND I was right. My excuse today is that I suffered through it just to make some space on the DVR, and I'm sticking with that - plus I was curious to see JUST how bad it could be. It's not totally un-watchable, just almost completely un-watchable. Painful at times, and other times it just left me scratching my head, wondering who the hell thought this would be a good idea. The Broadway show had its day, and thankfully was never followed by anybody making the musical "Dogs", which would have been the obvious parody, if you ask me. There was a time when the live show was promoted with "Now, and forever at the Winter Garden Theater", which sounded a bit like a threat, if not just overly ambitious. "Yes, I know it's 1985, but we're now taking reservations for 2015, would you like an orchestra seat or something in the balcony?" The show ran on Broadway from 1982 until September 10, 2000 - that's almost 21 years ago to the day that it closed, after 7,485 performances. Then there was a revival on Broadway from 2016-2017.
"Cats" was a great NYC show, in that it was comforting to know that it was always THERE, always being performed, even if you never went to see it. Kind of like the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, true New Yorkers never visit, but like matzoh ball soup at 3 am, it's great to know that the opportunity is always available. Where else can you get actors in skintight catsuits coming into the crowd to fondle audience members? Pretty cheap thrills for a Times Square show, if you ask me. "Cats" was replaced at the Winter Garden (after "forever" turned out to not be a viable option) by "Mamma Mia?", which ran there from 2001 to 2013. And yet "Mamma Mia!" got adapted into a movie years before "Cats" did, go figure.
I'm avoiding it, of course, but where does one even BEGIN to tear apart this movie? It's ridiculous from start to finish - I've never seen the stage musical performed, but the plot concerns a group of cats who get together for a contest, to decide which of them is worthy of being reincarnated, or taken to the HeaviSide Layer, whatever that means. Wait, I thought all cats supposedly have nine lives, why are we getting so bent out of shape over just one of them getting a second life? Why are we even getting involved in the afterlife of cats anyway, it's all bullshit based on folklore, right? There's just no THERE there, so why are you wasting my time with this? Why did Andrew Lloyd Webber waste his time with this, why did T.S. Eliot waste his time with this? "Practical cats"? There's nothing practical about this at all, I'd really start with T.S. Eliot and work my way down the chain if I had more time, but I don't.
Somehow old T.S. got stuck observing cats - was he just a weirdo or did he honestly have nothing better to do? OK, so he put together a bunch of clever rhymes, but that only gets you so far at the end of the day - remember, though, that there was NO internet back then, so people, and poets in particular, had a TON of spare time because they weren't shaming people on Twitter or posting pics to the Instagram or re-posting vacation photos from three years ago today on Facebook. So basically he had no choice but to come up with names like Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer and create a whole hierarchy and religious system that justified the odd behavior of stray cats. MAYBE it had some relevance for people back in 1939, but that was then and this is now, and don't we all know better?
Look, I'm a cat owner, I love cats, but I'm not a fan of "Cats", it's just silly. If I'd known this would all lead to me having to watch James Corden and Rebel Wilson dancing around in big cat suits, I would have passed. I SHOULD have passed, and now I have nothing but regrets - it's not quite as bad as the regret I felt after watching the documentary about the 1999 Woodstock Festival, but maybe it's about half of that? Look, I get it, if your thing is watching sexy dancers in tight cat-suits, that's cool, it's not my type of kink, but if it's yours, go right ahead. I don't particularly care for Taylor Swift, not even in a cat-suit, but I can see it if that's your thing. Mazel tov to you, but I'm not into furries. My old boss used to give me time off to go to San Diego Comic-Con, only he thought of it as a type of furry convention, which it wasn't, at least not for me. But that venue was so big, so overreaching that whatever your kink was, you could probably find it somewhere in the Gaslamp District, what I called "Comic Con After Dark". I went to a couple of burlesque shows in my early visits there, ones that featured women dressed as Marvel and DC characters, and it was called "Comic Strip". Memorable, and maybe a bit closer to my thing, but I have a feeling that after a time, somebody got cease and desist letters from Marvel and DC's lawyers.
This film had a $95 million budget, or thereabouts, and then only grossed $73 million or so worldwide - when you do the Hollywood math, that means Universal lost about $110 million on this (I know, that doesn't really add up right, but that's Hollywood math, the only people who made money were the advertising and promotion people, and the actors, I guess). But overall that proves that just because you CAN make this movie, that doesn't mean that it's a good idea to do so. Some actors will still come out on top, like I'm thinking that Jennifer Hudson and Taylor Swift are going to be OK, Idris Elba can still get work, as long as he never mentions his work on this film again in public, right? James Corden still has his TV show to fall back on, and Judi Dench and Ian McKellen have a lot of respectable work on their resumés, so they're gonna be all right. Rebel Wilson, I like her, but maybe she needs some help making better choices.
I'm still dancing around all the problems here, without mentioning them specifically, so here goes, beyond what I've already described. The actress who plays Victoria, the new cat to the tribe, has the same dumbstruck expression on her face in every single shot. This may be a directorial choice, instead of an acting choice, but still, it's annoying. I don't want to fat-shame anybody, because that's not cool, but people who are a bit on the plump side, both male and female, need to be aware that skin-tight suits are just not for everyone. I'm a big guy, and I don't wear shorts or tight shirts for a reason, it's just what we have to do if we're going to leave the house. Then we come to names like Growltiger, Bustopher, Bombalurina and words like "Jellicle", I don't know what any of this means, or is supposed to mean, so I'm just at a loss. It's just nonsense, right? Like it feels more like Dr. Seuss than anything else, but at least Dr. Seuss is accessible, it's aimed at kids so it will be easier to understand. I would have paid to have Mike Myers appear in the background here, dressed up as The Cat in the Hat, because at least that would have been funny and self-deprecating.
And that's maybe the biggest problem here, it's the tone. This shit takes itself WAY too seriously, when it's too ridiculous to be serious, even a little bit. Somehow when a movie goes WAY over the top like this, it's also got to be tongue-in-cheek, poke fun at itself a bit, and not be so god-damned straight-laced about everything. I'm supposed to think that there's nothing more important in life than a cat that catches mice on a train so that the passengers won't be bothered during their tea? Really? Was this ever a genuine problem on trains, in the U.K. or anywhere? Quite literally, who gives a rat's ass about this? It's a pile of nonsensical things that together, doesn't add up to anything worthwhile. Thank you, next.
Also starring Francesca Hayward, Judi Dench (last seen in "All Is True"), Idris Elba (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Jennifer Hudson (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Taylor Swift (ditto), Laurie Davidson (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Robbie Fairchild, Rebel Wilson (last seen in "The Hustle"), Jason Derulo, Ian McKellen (last seen in "The Dresser" (2015)), Steven McRae, Danny Collins, Naoimh Morgan, Ray Winstone (last seen in "Black Widow"), Mette Towley (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Daniela Norman, Laurent Bourgeois (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Larry Bourgeois (ditto), Jaih Betote, Jonadette Carpio, Bluey Robinson, Freya Rowley, Ida Saki, Zizi Strallen, Eric Underwood, Cory English, Melissa Madden-Gray.
RATING: 3 out of 10 marching roaches
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