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Post by therealcomicman117 on Jan 18, 2020 3:58:16 GMT
Now you really make me want to see it. I sincerely apologize. I'm sure if I did ever watch it, I would regret it immensely, but sometimes I seem to like to torture myself.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Jan 18, 2020 6:15:57 GMT
I was not disappointed.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Mar 18, 2020 22:20:01 GMT
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 2, 2021 2:08:26 GMT
WELL, I ENJOYED IT. Not even in an ironic way! The (over)reactions on the interwebs have been both predictable and pretty weird - yes, I know that in these days when hate-viewing is so popular it's cool to make fun of a movie this weird, I know things may be completely baffling to people who are not familiar with the stage show, I know Hooper's visual choices may look utterly ridiculous to many viewers...and yet I wonder what on earth was expected from a movie of "Cats". I was subjected to that official video recording of the stage show when I was in studying in the university - one of our professors didn't want us to study that particular day, I guess, so she put on the tape of "Cats". Some of it was fun, some of it was boring, overall it just felt strange to me. And while I was never a big fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber, I did find some of the songs to be quite good fun. So having watched the movie after the insanely negative response to it I just can't help but feel that this is yet another case of overhype which in this case happens to be negative, a case of bandwagon-jumping from reviewers hungry for easy clicks. Because of course they're gonna get a ton of views for their Youtube takedown of the movie. And don't get me wrong, I do understand that people may legit hate this movie. But for some reason I do think that it's all a bit exaggerated. One quick look at the most liked reviews on Letterboxd reveals that pretty much all of them are one-star or half-a-star reviews which seem like a competition for the most try-hard one-liner. And one key thing among them is that occasionally you stumble upon a 'I never had so much fun in my life. 1 star' reviews which reek of desperation for joining the crowd without admitting to sincerely liking the film. Well, fuck that - I did like it Again, I didn't have that same sense of bafflement at the movie because I was familiar with the musical and the movie was...well, a screen version of that. In fact, I'll be that one asshole who thinks that the cinematic dimension is actually more interesting for "Cats" than theatre. There you just get a stage and a bunch of actors doing songs in rapid succession for a couple of hours. Yes, they wear fun costumes and some of the songs are entertaining but overall it's not that much fun (although I am saying that just based on the tape of the stage show - maybe the experience of actually sitting there is different). A cinematic interpretation gives this mess a whole new life with the colorful sets, new energy, actors having the opportunity to run and jump around - things are livened up. So even when a boring song comes on (the Ian McKellen one, for instance) you can just kind of drift away into the strangeness of it all. It doesn't matter much that the song is somewhat dull when you've got so much other stuff to be amused by like the character design, like the image of fur-covered Ian McKellen furiously licking a bowl of milk or just the image of fur-covered Ian McKellen itself, or like Dame Judi Dench lying around listening to him looking somewhat aroused. The whole thing is so bizarre that it actually is rather entertaining. At least to me. I had no trouble getting into the world of this movie and riding its tonal wave. It actually reminds me of another ambitious and properly weird film that got bashed by everyone but that I really liked - I think it does share a full no-looking-back devotion to its strange vision with Barry Levinson's "Toys". In most ways I'd actually say that this film is quite unlike any other film I can think of. It doesn't follow any rulebook, it exists on its own terms, it truly stands out from the crowd and ultimately it all depends on whether you're willing to give in to its sense of humor, to its unabashed campiness, to its rhythms and genuine silliness. If you are then you'll have a fun time. But it does definitely help to be familiar with the musical. I can't quite imagine what it must be like to see this without any prior knowledge of what's about to unfold. Of course it's a bit messy and there're bad choices on display - Jason Derulo kinda ruins his otherwise fun and catchy song while Jennifer Hudson hilariously overdoes her most dramatic number which could've had more of an impact under different circumstances. But overall? I had a genuinely fun time. It's a pretty audacious movie but I got into its groove quite easily. I got used to the motion capture and the designs on the trailer stage, to be honest. So yeah, I'm sure most folks will be having fun with this vis-a-vis people like Jenny Nicholson or some other Youtube folks dissecting the movie into bits and pieces, asking literal questions about stuff like characters turning into dust, appearing and disappearing, breaking the fourth wall, etc. But I think that to look at it from that POV is to specifically choose a path which is the direct opposite of the one the movie is trying to walk on and to entertain you with. In this case just letting go and embracing the campiness and the silliness can lead to a pretty good time. I have nothing to add to this, I just want to say that I agree with every word. Well, I liked Ian McKellen's song, actually. It was rather touching. There are some hallucinatory nightmare stuff early on, but on the whole this is... well, Cats. My major complaints are Jennifer Hudson's Razzie-worthy performance and the Rum Tum Tugger song (a great joy in the filmed play) was staged in a very dull manner with awful sound mixing. Couldn't understand a word of it.
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