Help! Tom Hooper’s Cats broke something in my brain! While seemingly every critic is turning up their nose in disgust at the musical, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve gone insane, or if everyone else has. It’s like I’m the doomed protagonist of my own Lovecraftian nightmare.
It’s a bit of a stretch to even think of Cats as a movie in the traditional sense. The general idea is that a white house cat named Victoria (Francesca Hayward) is abandoned to the street by her owner and taken in by a clowder of cats known as the Jellicles. Once a year, the cats participate in an event known as the Jellicle Ball, where the oldest and wisest cat Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) selects one of the others to ascend to the Heaviside Layer. Or, if you’re reading between the lines, to become a willing ritual sacrifice with promise of reincarnation.
This information isn’t conveyed through normal expository means as the film seems not to be concerned with having any kind of conventional narrative structure. Instead it gyrates and prances through ca(s)t introductions for most of its run-time before coming to a vague climax and resolution, sprinkling bits of exposition along the way. All of this is in implied heavy air quotes, by the way.
An interesting choice, as well, to costume the cast with computer-generated fur rather than practical costumes. This was a sticking point for most people ever since the first trailer premiered, and I can’t really blame them. As with most uncanny effects, it gets easier to watch as your psyche fractures, but you never get used to how wrong everything feels. Cats with human hands, feet, and facial features? Wearing fur coats and jewelry? Disrobing from their own skin? For the sake of your sanity, I beg of you, don’t pay it any mind.
Despite all of this, I actually found myself enjoying Cats for what it is. Sure, it’s all the things I’ve mentioned above and more, but one thing it’s not is boring. It’s paced in such a way that there is little to no filler between the songs and there’s always enough, if not too much, going on to keep you at a bare minimum engaged or at least bemused (in a good way). The songs are idiosyncratic and nonsensical to the point where it’s kind of charming and I’ll be damned if “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats” hasn’t been stuck in my head for over a week now. Entering the film with rock-bottom expectations also doesn’t hurt.
Cats really is something better off experienced rather than having explained to you secondhand because of how indescribable most of it is. Underneath the insanity, there’s without a doubt something worth watching. The music is solid, and although it can be vastly inconsistent at times, the production design is fun and imaginative. There’s so much more I could try to convey, but I think going in “unspoiled” and letting the whole thing wash over you in real time like the nightmare it is might be the best way to experience it.
6