Cats is the movie on everyone’s minds lately and the name in everyone’s mouths as soon as they’re asked, “What should we see now?” Sure, Little Women and 1917 just came out, but why see something good when you can watch Cats? Even the musical Cats has attracted decades of ire from fans who inexplicably love the production and logical viewers who think the entire thing is an absolutely bonkers mess of a story.
Regardless, if you enjoy Cats, you enjoy Cats. Guilty pleasures shouldn’t be guilty; they should just be pleasures, especially with something as innocuous and innocent as enjoying a movie like this. The movie could be considered so bad it’s good — or just so bad it’s bad. You be the judge.
It’s Good — The Passion
One of the great things about a passion project like Cats is that the passion is there. Tom Hooper really made The King’s Speech and Les Misérables just to turn around and make Cats. One could tell, by watching Les Misérables, that Cats would always be inevitable, though it wasn’t quite this bad.
The good thing about this being a passion project, though, is that you can feel the intensity that was put into the movie. If nothing else, the creators and performers are incredibly passionate about their final product.
It’s Bad — The CGI
Where do we even start with the CGI? Andrew Lloyd Webber made this inevitably terrible by deciding that the cats in Cats would be bipedal nightmare creatures, but Tom Hooper said, “Hold my beer,” and took the whole concept one horrifying step further.
Now, in the film adaptation of Cats, the cats have bipedal human bodies covered in fur, disturbingly human hands paired with peculiarly feline feet, and — most disturbing of all — they all just have human faces. Just… furry, CGI human faces. It’s abysmal. It’s an absolute nightmare and a waking horror.
It’s Good — The Songs
Andrew Lloyd Webber is pretty good at writing fun music if nothing else. Though many shun him for his absolutely bonkers plots and his strange holier-than-thou attitude about shows that are really only just okay, he can write a catchy tune, we’ll tell you that much right now, and Cats is no exception.
Who doesn’t at least know the beginning of “Memory,” which can now be sung to you in a movie theater by a bipedal, uncanny valley-disrupting, furry cat-human monster hybrid, just as God intended?
It’s Bad — It’s Incredibly Slow
The pacing of the film adaptation of Cats, much like the original stage production of Cats, suffers from incredibly slow pacing through a story that slogs by nature already (though we’ll get to that).
This makes Cats almost insufferable to sit through because the moments that are enjoyable (few and far between) and the moments that are laughable (more frequent, but you have to make them yourself) are not plentiful enough to get the audience comfortably through huge chunks of boring nothingness.
It’s Good — It’s Fun
The boring nothingness aside, though, one of the most enjoyable things a person can do with their friends is going to the movie theater as a group and see a horrible movie together, so they can heckle the absurdities and point out the flaws together.
We are the generation that grew up on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and so we’re always prepared for a good riff on a bad movie. That’s one of the things that makes Cats so bad it’s good — there’s really not a better movie to mock together as a family right now than Cats.
It’s Bad — The Story
The story of Cats is just… It’s not a good story. It has never been a good story. The entire concept of Cats is that the Jellicle Cats (like Macavity, Grizabella, and Rum Tum Tugger) all sing and dance around an alley before Old Deuteronomy tells them one cat will die and get to go to Cat Heaven (or the Heaviside Layer).
At this point the cats hold the Jellicle Ball, where they all sing about themselves. One cat is chosen for Cat Heaven, and that’s it. That’s Cats. The story is incredibly terrible, and so the movie could never be good by default, tragically.
It’s Good — It’s Intriguing to Look At
For better or for worse, Cats is an incredible film to witness. It is visually dynamic for sure. The cats themselves are, of course, terrifying, as described earlier, but isn’t it amazing that technology has advanced this far? To make cat people this terrible?
Technology sure is phenomenal. Plus, the settings, dance numbers, and cinematography are actually quite beautiful at times, making a gorgeous movie to watch if you just let your eyes unfocus and glaze over as you zone out staring at the screen.
It’s Bad — It Commits to the Horrors
In for a penny, in for a pound. Tragically, this is also the case for Cats, which not only leans into the total terrifying chaos of the original plot of Cats but also entirely embraces it like a long-lost son.
The nightmare horrors of Cats appear in old man cats like Ian McKellan licking themselves on screen, the fact that Rebel Wilson removes a skin/fur layer at one point and just the absolute sheer madness of monstrous bipedal cat people like the ones Tom Hooper has used to lay siege on our society.
It’s Good — It’s Completely Outrageous
Cats is absolutely bananas. It is bonkers, totally insane, completely outrageous, and, to be frank, downright silly and pretty bad. If you accept this going into the movie and don’t expect anything good out of it, you may just have a fun experience.
Go with a lot of your friends, buckle up for a bumpy ride, and don’t expect Schindler’s List out of this thing. It’s Cats. It was always going to be Cats. It is always going to be Cats. The sooner we accept this and move on, the sooner we can get on with our lives.
It’s Bad — It’s Just Disturbing
To be frank, Cats as a whole is just disturbing. As we said, it fully commits to the horrors of the story, like the bipedal cat monsters and the fact that the cats are all singing their hearts out so that another cat will murder them and send them to Cat Heaven, which they’ve only just heard of.
It’s dark, but not in an interesting way; it’s fun, but not in a deliberate way; it’s horrifying, but not in an enjoyable way. All in all, Cats is a totally disturbing mess of a movie. If that’s your thing, then, congratulations! Enjoy the so-bad-it’s-good classic of the decade, Cats!
