This review will not sport any jokes or puns about the film version of CATS.
No, it’s not a very good movie, to be sure. As more than one U.S. president has said, “Mistakes were made.”
But director Tim Hooper’s work is sincere, and that counts for something. His film knows what it wants to be. Whether others will see what Hooper saw is another matter.
Hooper did make a major error in casting James Corden, Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen and Taylor Swift. Because we’ve long known their faces from hairline to chin, they look unnervingly eerie as cats. All seem to be the victims of some horrifying nuclear accident that had also caused long, thin growths to spurt from their behinds.
During CATS’ 18-year Broadway run, it had no stars to speak of. Some of the original cast members were performers who’d been in BRING BACK BIRDIE, DOCTOR JAZZ, DON’T STEP ON MY OLIVE BRANCH, LITTLE JOHNNY JONES, THE LITTLE PRINCE AND THE AVIATOR and MARLOWE. In those they’d played such roles as Conceited Man, Girl Friend, Neighbor, Indian, Passenger and Performer. Chances are that no one in the house saw Rene Clemente and said “Oh! There’s the guy we loved so much when he portrayed Jerome in PLAY ME A COUNTRY SONG!”
Some knew Betty Buckley. Only those who’d been following Broadway chapter and verse had then heard of Harry Groener and Stephen Mo Hanan. Terrence Mann would subsequently have fat parts in two Broadway blockbusters (LES MIZ and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST), but when CATS opened, his Broadway resume revealed that he’d only had small roles in BARNUM.
So the comparative anonymity of the 26 on the Winter Garden stage helped to make these strangers in cat outfits look intriguing; on the screen, the familiar stars look disturbingly strange.
One understands Hooper’s decision to cast stars – and why producers of many Broadway musicals have done just the opposite for the last few decades. After a Big Name leaves a Great Big Broadway Show, the property then seems like damaged goods. This didn’t matter much in the old days, when, say, Rosalind Russell left WONDERFUL TOWN after a year and replacement Carol Channing couldn’t keep it going for even three months, for during Russell’s run, the show had already paid back.
Today most musicals must run much longer than a year to start distributing profits to backers. Thus a safer way to proceed is to choose talented nobodies who can be replaced by equal nonentities ad infinitum. (None of this, you understand, is meant to imply a lack of talent – just a paucity of name recognition.)
Movies don’t have a problem with replacements. Once filming is completed, the stars will be there, to quote an expression not unknown to CATS, now and forever. So one understands Hooper’s and Universal Pictures’ decision to cast them.
Another problem is that there’s greater reality with a film than with a stage musical. On Broadway, John Napier’s unit set amused with its oversized junkyard. The film’s six designers instead give us an accurate London with especially detailed Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. So seeing creatures we’ve never seen roam around those familiar areas makes for an odd experience.
Those who are quick of eye may spot theater marquees for WAKE UP AND DREAM and THE CAT AND THE CANARY. With “dream” and “cat” in the titles, these might be the set designers’ ideas of Easter eggs. But a case could be made that this film takes place in the ‘20s or ‘30s when these stage shows or movies were playing.
The best set decoration? A wanted poster akin to the ones you see in post offices: “Macavity: Wanted for Everything.”
Yet another problem is that CATS takes place almost exclusively at night; most musicals, by their very nature, are sunny. The stage show compensated by having spotlights illuminate those who were singing and dancing. Here, the lighting is constantly dim, almost as if London is anticipating the Blitz. The doom and gloominess saps out the joy.
And there IS joy in much of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music and T.S. Eliot’s “lyrics.” Once CATS survived receiving less-than-love-letters from the Broadway critics and still became a blazingly hot ticket, the envious backlash soon began. A then-pre-titled Lloyd Webber was collaterally damaged with the rising jealous tide.
That shouldn’t have mitigated the bouncy fun in “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats,” “Skimbleshanks” and “Mister Mestoffeles” (nicely choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler). “Memory” isn’t the only beautiful song. Sit at a piano and see how long it would take you to find the angular, odd and intriguing series of notes that make up “Old Deuteronomy” or the elegant yet world-weary “Gus, the Theatre Cat.” No, let’s give The Lord (Lloyd Webber, that is) his due.
The screenplay, which Hooper co-wrote with Lee (BILLY ELLIOT) Hall, has interstitial dialogue that clarifies the story. Here’s betting that many who saw CATS on stage searched for a story and meaning for only a few minutes before saying the hell with it and demoting the musical to the status of a revue. Hooper and Hall will make many understand the plot and point of the show for the very first time.
(What isn’t understandable, however, is why Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer go on a tear and vandalize the town.)
Universal, seeing the dismal ticket sales – and the dirt-poor audience reaction from those who have attended – has now seen fit to cease all CATS For-Your-Consideration Oscar ads. What’s the point, the company seems to be saying. The new song that Swift wrote with Lloyd Webber didn’t even survive the first round of eliminations (which, frankly, is understandable on the basis of a first hearing).
Had poisonous word-of-mouth and audience indifference not been so intense, both Hudson and McKellen, despite their comparatively short screen time, might have had a shot at featured nominations.
Hudson gets “Memory” in both senses of the word – in that she’s inherited it and in that she understands what Grizabella has endured. It’s a poignant and powerful performance.
McKellen is quite moving in “Gus, the Theatre Cat” which has been reconfigured; it’s now a solo in which he sings Jellyorum’s lyrics, too. (Neither the long musical sequence that followed it in London nor the new one that Broadway used is here; nothing has replaced it.)
Most remarkable is what McKellen does during this song with a mere flick of his wrist. It’s the most cat-like maneuver that anyone in the film can achieve.
Dench is fine, despite all too often looking perilously like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion. Corden enjoys himself as Bustopher Jones and even gets to imperiously make a comment on perfect rhymes and the absence thereof. (Is this Lloyd Webber’s swipe at ol’ collaborator Tim Rice who was known to occasionally settle for a near-miss “rhyme”?)
Swift has the right sense of wonder, but because the film centers more on her seeing the world of cats unfold, she spends most of her time reacting, which never makes for a good role. Towards the end, though, she’s able to take a hands-on approach and shows she can handle it well. (So do the rest of the performers.)
What still mystifies is an obvious ending that should have occurred to the powers-that-be when CATS was first being written. After Grizabella advances to the Heavyside Layer, she should return moments later looking like a billion dollars. For, at least as the mythology goes, cats have nine lives. The lyrics even show that Grizabella anticipates this: “I must think of a new life … when the dawn comes … a new day will begin.” All these legendary pros, and not one saw that as the logical and ebullient ending?
Oh, well; CATS didn’t suffer for the ending it chose. It really hasn’t suffered until now. Note that the last three musicals that set a Broadway long-run record have not done well in Hollywood; CATS now joins A CHORUS LINE and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA as artistic and financial disappointments. For that matter, the longest-running off-Broadway show – THE FANTASTICKS – wasn’t a success on film, either.
Looking at the ratings bestowed on them by those posting on imdb.com, at least PHANTOM gets a respectable 7.3, A CHORUS LINE a 6.2 and FANTASTICKS a 5.6. CATS, however, scores only 2.8, which may be the lowest ever for a so-called major motion picture.
Perhaps expectations and the property’s overexposure were factors in all four films’ underachieving. Still, CATS doesn’t deserve our contempt. No one should feel that it’s beneath it, either.
