So, let's do this.
I went and experienced this magnificent work of art a few days ago, and about 10 minutes in I realized there would be way too much bizarre shit in it for me to be able to remember all of it and write about it afterwards. I knew then and there that it'd be like waking up from a weird dream; if I didn't write it down immediately and instead waited a few hours to retell it, I'd gradually lose my grip on it and forget all the details that made it fascinating.
So because the screening was nearly deserted and there was no one sitting behind me, I tried something I'd never done before: I whipped out my phone and wrote a few notes over the course of the film, just so I wouldn't lose track of all the things that most caught my attention. By the end of it I had typed out 41 items, which I have now expanded on or transcribed ipsis litteris for our mutual entertainment.
-
1. Tom Hooper's films have an uncanny way of making British accents sound intensely off-putting and fake.
2. This is a disorienting film in many ways, but when I wrote this particular note I was referring to the space. The entire story feels like it takes place in a total of 5 sets, and yet the editing still made it hard to keep track of who was where and what was happening in different locations at the same time.
3. It feels, looks and sounds incredibly rushed. You can see that the tech crew desperately needed an extra few months to polish it but were told by Universal it had to be out by Christmas regardless of what state it was in. Many of the songs sound like they were recorded in a single take, with Idris Elba's being the most egregious ones. You can't convince me that those were the best recordings they could've gotten out of him.
4. The instrumentation is very, very weird in a way that I can't quite articulate. ("Very, very weird in a way that I can't quite articulate" is an apt summation of every single one of these notes, really. That could be the entire review right there but I just cannot stop myself from wasting people's time.) The production exists in a weird place smack dab between Garage Band cheapness and the synth and guitar-heavy 80s kitsch that was also all over the staging of
The Phantom of the Opera that I watched, from which I can only surmise that that's probably Andrew Lloyd Webber's bread and butter. (I don't know, I'm not well versed in musical theater.) It never feels right, and yet it also does at the same time. Again, disorienting in many ways.
5. I do disagree with the notion that we never get used to the uncanny valley feeling of the CGI, because I definitely did at some point. (Full disclosure, though, from the moment the first teaser dropped I never thought the design of the cats was
that bizarre or unsettling, so maybe I'm just weird.) The beginning was
rough, though, with multiple shots looking like floating heads slapped on top of video game bodies. I mean a very clear, very discernible separation of head and body with them not even moving in sync. See #3 about this being rushed.
6. This film contains multiple shots of Rebel Wilson's cat spread-legged and scratching herself where her genitals and asshole were before they were digitally deleted.
7. This film contains multiple shots of Rebel Wilson tumbling and tripping and getting hit in the face. It's always meant to be funny and it never is.
8. This film contains a scene in which Rebel Wilson unzips her cat fur to reveal identical cat fur beneath it. I don't know if this was meant to be funny, but it very much was.
9. Rebel Wilson's entire performance is
also very, very weird in a way that I can't quite articulate. It's like a deepfake. It's like she's out of tempo with the rest of the film. It's like she's being dubbed. When she sings, it's like she's in the next room or forgot how to breathe.
10. There are little biped anthropomorphic mice with children's faces CGI'd on them and cat Rebel Wilson teaches them to dance. It's scary. The mice are the absolute shoddiest CGI in the whole film.
11. The humanoid cockroaches were exactly as glorious as I hoped, THANK GOD. There's one scene with a procession of dozens of biped cockroaches with human faces marching and tap dancing and singing and climbing on furniture and moving their arms and then cat Rebel Wilson eats some of them and I love it. I did not imagine that I would greet the new decade by typing
that sentence out, but such is movie magic.
12. Jason Derulo.
13. I'm pretty sure there's one line about Jason Derulo eating Rebel Wilson's ass?
14. The tonal whiplash is insane. The jump from an upbeat number with elaborate choreography and multiple dancers to Jennifer Hudson's relentless tearjerking is astonishing. Imagine a smash cut from a humorous song about a horny Jason Derulo to
this exact moment.15. Jennifer Hudson birthed the term overacting. The word did not exist before she invented the concept. She hasn't even been on screen for a full 10 seconds before she's already cranked it up to eleven.
16. Jennifer Hudson's snot has a mind of its own. It is perpetual, and at one point when Hudson leans forward in pain it hangs from her nose perpendicularly. It even swings a little. I don't think she had a single second on screen without that stream of snot falling on her upper lip. Viola Davis wishes.
17. Jason Derulo.
18. James Corden's continued career is proof that God has abandoned us.
19. I swear to the God that has abandoned us, there's an entire shot in which James Corden's cat body is see-through because the CGI wasn't fully rendered. He's walking down a cobblestone street and you can see the fucking cobbles behind where his body should've been, like he's transparent.
20. There is, in fact, "male getting hit in the groin" humor in this film. It was either before or after the lobster deepthroating, I didn't take note of that.
21. The CGI is bizarrely incomplete. It's not that it could've been better, it's that it's
literally not finished. Not only are there several instances in which it looks weirdly pixelated (like the picture has switched to 360p or something), there are moments that they clearly forgot to go back and work on, like exposed human hands and feet where paws should be, or the aforementioned see-through cat. Most scenes of objects and animals in motion are also distractingly fake. There are bits with cats getting catapulted in the air, cats running around, cats feasting on garbage, and even a scene of a porcelain vase tumbling to the ground, and they all look cheaper than a video game or an Instagram filter. (Though admittedly I should go easier on the bit with the cats feasting on garbage, because that's 100% me watching this.)
22. Also inconsistent: the feet? Some look like socks, others are so incredibly detailed that you discern toes and toenails, some cats wear shoes? Some cats wear clothes and others are naked?
23A. This film made me pay way too much attention to the cats' feet, mouths, teeth and pelvises, and I feel weird as a result of that.
23B. The longer this film went, the cuter some of those fucking cats looked, and I don't like what it says about me that I thought that.
24. At one point, Ian McKellen goes "meow meow MEOWWWWWW".
25. At one point, Ian McKellen slurps milk from a plate. This goes on for a few seconds, and the sound design is remarkably detailed. Coincidentally, the fact that he said yes to starring in
The Good Liar means that this is
not the most degrading thing we saw him do on screen in 2019.
26. At one point, Ian McKellen's character goes off on a monologue. When the monologue begins, he's wearing a coat and a scarf. As the monologue progresses, he slowly opens the coat and bares his full cat torso. By the end of it he's like a senior rambling with an open robe and nothing underneath. This is very, very invasive in a way that I can't quite articulate.
27. There's an extended dance break in which the cats all perform for Judi Dench. The singing goes on pause for what feels like several minutes while we're treated to a wordless montage of cats dancing and flailing around with instrumental compositions playing in the background. I cannot describe this in a way that does it justice, and I imagine that watching this in a theater with real-life human actors must be terrifying, like summoning a demon.
28. During this extended break, one cat spins around so fast that he launches off the ground like a rocket.
29. Like I said before, Ian McKellen's hands have absolutely no CGI on them, fully human. I don't know if this is due to the inconsistency of the film's character design or if they just forgot to get it done.
30. The set design is actually pretty decent.
(followed by the following note less than 15 seconds later:)31. Actually the ghastly green screen makes this whole thing even more hallucinatory, so maybe hold off on praising the visuals.
32. "Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat" slaps, and so do other songs.
33. I wish they'd gone wilder with the catnip orgy. We deserved that.
34. Taylor Swift and Idris Elba's cats definitely fuck. And I mean, good for both of them.
35. Macavity without his coat is surprisingly horrifying. Just consider what an incredible achievement this film is that it made people pray Idris Elba would put his clothes back on instead of the other way around.
36. The cats repeatedly do this thing where instead of kissing they just rub their heads on each other, which is obviously what real-life cats do but is still super weird and amusing.
37. Now, if these cats could've all just agreed to stop being cunts to Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench could've done the right thing and chosen my boy Skimbleshanks AS HE DESERVED. But I guess there's always the sequel.
38. Judi Dench breaking the fourth wall and singing the entirety of a 3-minute song while staring deep into our souls ("A CAT IS
NOT A DOG" is more unsettling than anything Ari Aster can cook up for his next film.
39. There was some loud crying in my theater at the end of this film?
40. I would actually love to see a version of this that has no CGI at all and is just a bunch of actors frolicking and twirling around in human clothes on green screen sets with giant props. Bonus points if they make it singing only with no backing instrumentation.
And the last note just read: 41. We are all Jellicle cats on this blessed day.
-
Jango's review is spot-on.
I had a blast watching this movie. It exists in its own reality with its own rules. It's absolutely inexplicable, and it's so gleefully weird, hallucinatory and out of whack that it's impossible to look away from, which is precisely its intention. Like Jango said, even when it slows down for one of the less interesting tracks, there's still so much bizarre stuff going on that you're never bored. Again, it's uncannily like
Serenity in that so many of Hooper's decisions are so hopelessly out-there and misguided, and yet at the same time delivered with so much confidence and such unwavering dedication by all involved, that the contrast creates a completely sui generis experience. The bad elements (the stiff performances, unfinished CGI, the lack of a story, the occasional off-key and off-tempo singing) add to the spectacle instead of detracting from it, and I simply can't explain why other than to say that train wrecks are fascinating. They tried something so wildly weird and the results were so wildly out of control that I can't help but be amused.
None of the famous actors are good. Corden is as horrendously unlikable as always, Wilson and McKellen are incomprehensible, Dench and Elba are unsettling in all the wrong ways, Derulo... exists, and Hudson seems so dead set on getting her own Fantine Oscar glory, taking herself so seriously and so hopelessly unaware of the completely tongue-in-cheek and ridiculous tone of everything going on around her, that hers is one of the few performances that can't be enjoyed even for the mess of it. Reading the cast list before filming began made it sound like someone drew random names out of a hat, and it still does. I'm convinced that that's exactly how they cast this. Yet on the other hand there's Swift and the lesser known players (most of whom I gather come from musical theater), who unlike the big-name stars have the exact measure of the material they're working with and deliver their songs and dance numbers with much more ease and joy than they do.
I actually looked up some videos of the 1998 recording just to see what this looks like on stage, and I find that infinitely weirder and more macabre than anything in this.
This (the makeup, those actors crawling on all fours
) is a scary cult;
this is an Oscar-winning team of filmmakers out of their fucking minds on blow with $90 million to put to the best possible use. (Also, I just love how the roaches have yellow blanks for faces in that first shot and full human faces in the second, clearly due to the VFX team not having time to finish this scene. People looked at this and thought it was a good idea, and I have to admire that.)
I don't know what else to tell you. Sometimes films are bad in ways that turn me off from them and make me stop caring, and sometimes they're inexplicable in ways that make them compulsively entertaining. Sometimes you get
The Danish Girl, and sometimes you get
Cats. And while I'm not shocked that this took such a beating and became a pop culture punching bag (the original musical was that too, I guess), when I think of all the trash that got a pass and made rivers of money recently, I get way more defensive than this probably deserves. I find it kinda ridiculous that audiences heartily embraced that utterly artless and aggressively anonymous slab of manufactured reheated mediocrity
The Greatest Showman and made a song as trashy as This is Me an Oscar-nominated hit, but are treating
this like it's radioactive and ~*offensive to good tastes*~.
This made $1.65 billion and has a 7 on IMDB. No one in those films even deepthroated anything, smfh.
TL;DR: Jellicle songs for Jellicle trash Jellicle songs for Jellicle trash Jellicle songs for Jellicle trash Jellicle songs for Jellicle trash Jellicle songs for Jellicle trash Jellicl