When I entered a rowdy screening of “Cats,” I was nervous. The movie has become infamous for just how shockingly awful it is, so I knew what I was getting into, right? There was just no way that this movie could be as terrible as people claimed, right?
Right.
It turned out to be actually worse and better than people made it out to be.
I didn’t expect the movie to be good, but I did expect some kind of consistency —a plot that drove the story forward, at least. But the scenes consisted of one character introducing themselves before they (quite literally) disappeared into thin air. As I watched the film, I wondered what the point of the songs were since the characters didn’t matter to the overall story. To be honest, I still have no idea what a ‘jellicle cat’ is despite them being mentioned in every one of them. This ties in well with the inconsistent CGI, as the characters would shift from cat-sized to human height.
And yes, the CGI was bizarre and frightening. The characters had weirdly humanized facial features, and it was unnerving to see acrylic nails on their paws. During some parts of the film, I got so overwhelmed by the bloated CGI that I had an out-of-body experience. I was sucked by the bright colors of a 60’s acid trip, and haunted by the actors faces that seemed to float off of their poorly animated bodies.
There’s no denying that “Cats” is a terrible movie. With that being said, I highly recommend that everyone go see it.
You need to have the proper preparations of course, you can’t enter this as though like it’s any other film. It’ll also require an army of friends with a sense of humor so that you can charge into this beautiful disaster head-on. “Cats” is truly unlike any other movie created and really does deserve as much attention as possible.