Well. The movie was certainly interesting! Overall it was better than I anticipated, and more frustrating for it. There was a lot of good in there - particularly in the performances - but the let-downs make it a dumpster fire.
Firstly, the cast. I thought all the performances were from good to magnificent, and where there were weaknesses, it was in direction not performance. Jason Derulo was far less annoying than I anticipated, and as I have a massive soft spot for the Rockstar Tugger I was afraid to see a favourite ruined. He actually left me wanting to see more - he didn't get to sing "Old Deuteronomy" or "Mister Mistoffelees", but what we did get to see was a fun character!
Robbie Fairchild as Munkustrap was decent, I only wish he had a richer, deeper voice - but his role was not far removed from the stage. The whole ensemble was lacking those deeper tones, with Judi Dench as Deut. Dame Judi was, frankly, kinda adorable, reminding me strongly of a senior sweet fluffy cat I used to have. She's no singer, but she delivered a character that felt natural to have everyone care about her. Taylor Swift was surprisingly decent - but then she was very much a one-song cameo and didn't feature in the ensemble at all. Cassandra took the Bombalurina role in the rest of the movie. James Corden as Bustopher Jones was heavily featured in the trailer, and well, that's what we got. He became slightly more like-able as a character, but entirely missed the point of Bustopher Jones.
The ensemble got very little chance to shine, there were occasional glimpses of felinity from Zizi Strallen, and I think the other Cats Alumni - but the CGI made it hard to recognise people.
Continuing with the positives, the music sounded fantastic! The orchestration is rich and lush, the ensemble vocals are great, the performances have a live authenticity to them which brought it to life in places. No skimping on fake keyboard cello samples here!
Some of the script worked better than I anticipated, the dialogue mostly seemed to flow naturally. There were cute moments such as Bustopher owning his nickname from Macavity, and the mice as recurring characters. Focusing the plot more centrally on Victoria did work, and could have been made to work overall! But more critique later.
The set design was beautiful. As a native Londoner I can recognise the back streets behind Piccadilly, and Piccadilly Circus itself, Trafalgar Square of course, and the Barge below Tower Bridge... Skimbleshanks dancing across the river on the tracks into Charing Cross. But - as a native Londoner it was annoying to suggest that the "Northern Mail" would run from Charing Cross, or the conflation of Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square, the Russell Hotel has left Bloomsbury and headed west, and Victoria Grove has headed east about as far. It's a hodge-podge of London seen through the eyes of a tourist's holiday snaps. But the details were beautiful - apart from one major flaw!
OK, onto the elements I have problems with.
The first is particularly frustrating as it would have been so simple to avoid - the shifting scale. How big or small are these cats? They seem to leap from about 8" to 3' tall from one moment to the next! It has been pointed out that on stage the scale is not consistent, but the difference is when you're physically in the theatre, the scale is absolutely constant, despite everything the performers remain human-sized. But in the film medium, our points of reference for the world building is the sets and props. Everything was built for this film - would it have been so difficult to make a hard rule that everything was 4:1 scale? Victoria wears a watch for a collar, and rings for bracelets - but the pearls around her neck are as large as the watch face. It comes across as careless or lazy to not bother to design all the pieces to a consistent scale. This is such a flaw in a fantasy world, as the every-day familiar objects around them are what tells the audience about the world these characters inhabit. Without consistency, there's no foundations to the world, and every time the scale changes it jars. Skimbleshanks was particularly painful for this, as the Cats are in the abandoned theatre, ok, and entered a make-believe world of playing about in an actual train carriage, which worked just fine, both in scale and concept. But between we see them dancing on train tracks, and proportionally the Cats must be about 8" tall! Jennyanydots' Mice are miniscule - we see them behind her as she puts her hand in a mouse trap, which completely dwarfs those mice!
The biggest, most glaring, most crippling fault in the film, the one element that destroys any chances of its success, is the CGI. It. Is. Awful. There are moments where the ensemble faces are detatched from their bodies. There is no weight. The lighting is wrong. The colours are dull and muted. Why do the cockroaches have full human faces? Why do some cats wear shoes?
But above all, has anyone in this design team ever seen a cat? Their proportions are all wrong - we've all heard the complaints from the trailers - but it's fundamental. Their ears are too high and disconnected from their skulls, their tails do not connect to their spines. The colours and patterns of their markings shift and change. The character design is a huge let-down - but it is also curious how odd elements of John Napier's concepts continue, for example Jennyanydots taking off her "coat" (which is a horrifying moment in itself) - why keep that concept? It became an almost thrown-away plot point, but when the other characters wearing coats are clearly wearing garments, why did Jenny take off her skin? I don't have a problem with Cats in some clothing - as I write this, my soggy cat is wearing his coat as he's just come in from the rain, his black fur sparkling with raindrops. But the character design needs to be consistent and delineate between clothing coats, and Cat bodies. John Napier's work on stage uses a willing suspension of disbelief for the audience to understand the concept of "cat" being presented, not a literal interpretation, but the movie wants to give us hyper-realistic designs which therefore need a solid concept behind them. Is Deuteronomy wearing a coat, or is she super fluffy? Is Grizabella's coat a garment she takes off as Macavity takes off his coat? What on earth are they thinking with Jennyanydots?!
In real life, 90% of Ginger cats are male - a genetic quirk. Also, 99.9% of Calico/Tortie cats are female - making Mungojerrie one in ten thousand. But the majority of female Cats seemed to be some form of ginger, or lazy sandy colouring at least. Very few ensemble characters had any defining characteristics, apart from Syllabub who is a rich Bengal Tabby. There's very little reference to the appearance of real cat markings in the film - and what reserach there is seems to have been conducted by scanning through expensive, rare Cat breeds such as the Abysinnian, Ocicat, Bengal - these are not cats you find in the streets. Now, John Napier's designs onstage are not accurate, but that is the intention of his designs to be "Sketches of Cats", and not literal interpretations. The film has taken a much more literal approach with ears and whiskers, but skipped the research to develop an ensemble of individual characters, and if there's any one defining feature of cats, the animal, or Cats, the musical, it is the individual characters of Cats!
And that is what was most tragically missing from the concept of this film - the ensemble. The Tribe. The characters. The interactions, the affection, the playfulness of the kittens. There was no chance to get to know anyone other than Victoria, Mistoffelees, Munkustrap, Macavity and Deuteronomy. Everyone else appeared for a cameo then faded away. One of the big changes to the script is altering the songs to be first-person, which was most notably a failure in "Gus", as he sang "And I say, as I scratch myself with my claws..." his song in particular feels like a conversation, with a voice that is gently critical at times, and him delivering those lines failed to seem self-recriminatory, but just awkward. "Macavity" similarly lost the conversational tone, where normally Demeter describes his awful crimes, while Bombalurina focuses on the mundane for contrast.
But while the first-person lyrics felt clunky, they also had a much bigger impact, in losing the sense of community. Gus lacks Jellylorum to care for him, no longer does Tugger sing his admiration for Mister Mistoffelees (although he keeps some impressively high notes!). There is no longer a trio describing Jennyanydots' hard work, nor does Jennyanydots (or anyone) admire Bustopher Jones, instead they are all entirely focused on themselves and no-one else. And we don't get to know any of the ensemble cats, such as Jellylorum who we see in context of her presenting other Cats.
Painting Macavity as the villain of the piece created a lot of unresolved questions, trying to fill in gaps in the show that were better left unknown. Macavity wants to be the Cat chosen to be sent to the Heaviside Layer - eliminating all his competition is his aim. But even Idris Elba couldn't pull together a cohesive character - menacing but over-exposed, lurking but goofy. And in no way is he a "Ginger cat" as detailed in the lyrics. Taylor Swift's cameo to introduce him - as a ginger cat herself - came from nowhere and went nowhere. She is not part of the tribe, but a hench-cat. Similarly Growltiger and the beret-wearing Griddlebone - who without the beret would be completely indistinct - appear to help him out. Ray Winstone as Growltiger is possibly the most perfect casting in the whole movie, but criminally under-used. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer's story arc needed a stronger conclusion - they are accepted back into the tribe after saying "oh, we didn't realise the big bad guy was bad!". OK they're not the brightest, but still, their behaviour was easily forgiven.
Shifting the focus onto Victoria as the "everyman" introducing us to their world worked surprisingly well, we see through her experiences. Recontextualising numbers like "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer" worked well, however the other story lines from the musical have been cut. The biggest victim of this is Grizabella, and this shows poor direction and a complete lack of understanding of the musical, and why "Memory" has such impact.
Onstage, we first meet Grizabella as she crashes the party while Rum Tum Tugger is having fun. Bombalurina and Demeter tell us, the audience, who she is, and as the tribe rejects her, she struts off with what pride she can muster. We next see her lurking at the Jellicle Ball, as the Cats all relax in the "kitty pile" the psychic twins sense her presence, and the entire second half of the ball is showing off, rubbing in her face how lithe and energetic the Tribe are, and how she is not welcome. She appears for Act 1 "Memory", the Tribe scatter and leave her to try to capture that joy they felt, on her own. She sings, thinking she's alone, but Old Deuteronomy hears. He sits and reflects throughout the interval, then sings "Moments of Happiness" attempting to explain to the Tribe why they need to accept Grizabella - Jemima's "Moonlight" verse, to the "Memory" melody, is the connection. She is lurking in this scene, but too proud to approach. Finally we see Grizabella later on, near the end of the night, when she is desperate and her pride is broken, she begs the tribe to understand - and finally they do, she is accepted, and chosen for the Heaviside Layer. Her character arc is one of losing her pride and accepting she must ask, beg for help. Key to this is the interactions with the tribe.
Now, in the film, Grizabella builds a relationship with Victoria at the cost of interacting with the rest of the tribe. She is seen lurking in the Ball, and she is chased off - but not in conjunction with the change in music. We see Grizabella alone outside - Victoria finds her, listens, and replies with "You think you have it rough? I don't even have a past to look back on, at least you got beautiful ghosts". This is an attempt at empathy and parallels, but it fails. Old Deuteronomy somehow looks out the window at the right moment, but is not present. At the end of the night, Victoria accepts Grizabella, brings her in to the tribe, and then Grizabella sings "Memory" - the emotional punch of "Touch me" having been pulled by the fact Victoria has already done just that.
Certain elements added to the Palladium revival have made it to the movie - Grizabella now has a scar, a head wound, which features prominently in her character design. The accompanying extended music underscore before Act 1 Memory, where Nicole Scherzinger pantomimed her head wound, hysteria and migraine, is also included. However Jennifer Hudson makes no reference to the scar or plays up an injury at all.
"Beautiful Ghosts" and its reprise are a complete waste of time. The emotional story trying to be told fails and comes across as point-scoring, and the padding of the reprise weakens the moment at the end of "Memory" where Grizabella is accepted.
The ending of the film is entirely awkward and mis-paced. Grizabella sails off in the chandelier hanging from a hot air balloon - a beautifully insane image. Macavity shows a goofy side as he clings to the rope only to fall off onto the statue of Admiral Nelson - at apparently human scale - and then the intent is to have Old Deuteronomy address the audience through the 4th wall. However this is poorly communicated, the scene is entirely static, and we just see Victoria, Munkustrap and Mistoffelees surrounding her and trying to react appropriately. As they are perched on the head of one of the Trafalgar Square Lions, there is nowhere for them to go. And then the film doesn't end with the end of the song, we get further dialogue as a tacked-on coda, and then, finally it stops. I do question why this final musical number needed to be presented so literally, when not in front of a live audience.
Returning to the theme of "have they ever met a cat?" with Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography - the cast included many extremely talented dancers, but the only time we see any feline qualities are the performers who have been in the stage show, recognisably Zizi Strallen. Gillian Lynne's genius was to make dancers dance like cats - and yet also choreograph with passion, elegance, and flow. Blankenbuehler's choreography was at its best when it was paraphrasing, or in a few moments, directly quoting the original work. There were many moments where it felt like rushed homework, a copied assignment, with key words changed but the shape of the argument being cribbed. Crucially, there was none of the elegance of movement that is an essential quality of the cat. The performers are all undeniably world class at what they do, but what they were being asked to do was not feline. This was further hampered by the character design, leaving shoes on certain Cats, providing no distinguishing features for many - there were just a chorus of indistinct, blurry, poorly CGI'd cats moving fast.
So. In conclusion.
The conception, direction and design of this film are awful. The performances are all solid and surprisingly enjoyable. There was no sense of tribe, family, individual personalities. The CGI makes it an unredeemable dumpster fire. Thank goodness we have the 1998 film!