Cats (2019)

Wait, wait, but this is like the most important episode we've ever recorded of anything. Oh my god, you're just leading with that. Huh Yeah, the most important episode ever of the Culture Cast is the one where we talk about twenty nineteen's film question Mark. I mean it's this is the look, here's the problem. Like, if you clicked on this episode, give a blonder it into this side of the internet, into the Culture Cast.

Yeah, Hi, everybody, welcome, look happy, Right, It's it's Musical month here on the Culture Cast. And we haven't done this in a very long time. Dare I say? Uh? I want to say it was some time around what e sixty twenty seventeen we did this.

I mean it's been a while. It was free Pandemic, free Sean Leang, free Ericness, which are peak, which are names that will mean nothing to essentially most of you unless you've been listening since the beginning. And if you've been listening since the beginning. Hi. Secondly, musicals are something that I love, but it's not something we came around to again.

For the primary reason of the last time we did it. One of the people we got to talk to was Jack Black for Tenacious Ty in the Pick of Destiny. So I was kind of just like, you know, not that why would we ever do it again? But I mean you see what I mean, it's like we kind of did. We did it really big one time.

You know who told me that you mentioned Black? Oh, I didn't get to meet him. We just did an interviewing. And like I said, it was it was a really long time. Oh I mean you you met him on the internet.

I mean I didn't even I didn't even get to interview him. This was literally so long ago that there was someone else, John who used to be one of the co hosts of the show, he interviewed him. Because back in the day when we were reaching out to get interviews, I always said, if you got the interview, you got to interview the person, regardless of who it was. And it's impressive. I'm not gonna I'm not going to change my tune even if it is the biggest person we undoubtedly interviewed at the time.

And I would still say, like one of the biggest people we ever talked to for the Culture Cast ever, because again I mean, like you say Jack Black, and everybody knows Jack Black, Like that's that's a that's a weelser. Yeah, yeah, now right, oh yeah right, Jesus Christ. You know, I kind of forgot anything he's known for. Yeah, right, in this day and age now. And that's the crazy thing.

It's like again, like I love musicals. I don't know why we never came back to them, but we didn't. But we're here now, and so it. You know, twenty fifteen was when we did those musicals. That was a really long time ago.

Obviously, you know twenty fifteen, what is that seven eight years ago? Now, I think, yeah, So here we are back at it doing musicals. And yeah, like Emma said, Emma, who's here once again? Emma of scary stories we tell one of the co hosts over there, I am also a co host over there, but I'm still the host of this show. Christashu, Hi, everybody.

It's a new year, it's a new me and boy, we're just starting the year off right. Honestly, I'm honored to be here. I'm kind of glad you're here because not only did we get together at six thirty in the afternoon the day before we're recording this to get together in the new year, because we hadn't talked since Christmas, but we watched this movie and now we're talking about it all in the same span of the evening and it's almost three in the morning where Emma lives. So yeah, ten thirty, twelve thirty, two thirty, Yeah, about eight hours. We're doing this for eight hours.

And now we're here, we're finally turning the record button on and we're gonna be talking about to kick off Musical month. Because yes, there is a bonus episode that you will be hearing of Starstruck with Heather Drain and Rachel mcpatten and I talking about that Australian musical which you should totally check out. But I didn't know that that was going to be a bonus episode this month, so in enjoy that one. But no, this is the first proper movie this month we're gonna be talking about. Oh proper is a prosper is certainly a word.

Yeah, it's a right word, but it is a word. Look, you know, the Culture Cast isn't a yuck yuck podcast of like people clowning on movies. It normally isn't, but this might be one of those times where we just can't help ourselves, and I think we are in the right to clown on it because it kind of deserves it. We're gonna be talking about a movie that I think didn't cause the pandemic, but boy, it was a bad omen for things to come. We're talking about twenty nineteen's adaptation of Cats, the musical Cats.

This is a film also called Cat Once a Year. Cats compete for the chance of a new life cross paws. I'm quite obviously the best. That's that. Here we go, yeah it now it is time to make the choice.

Cats directed by Tom Hooper, who also directed Lay Miz. So that was I guess his audition tape for this movie. Yeah, absolutely, it's it's based on looks great on a resume, right, which is why he hasn't directed a movie since, and he has in five years. That is a kidding that really fucking I know. I went like looked.

I was like, there's no way Tom Hooper hasn't directed Oh god, he hasn't directed anything since. So, yeah, it's directed by Tom Hooper's So it's based on the musical titled Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which is just a repurposing of T. S. Eliot's Old Possums Book of Practical Cats to the point where some of the songs are literally just the poems from the book. Uh.

And it stars a lot of people, and I think the like we'll talk about, there's a lot to unpack here, and we were we stopped ourselves from unpacking it while we were watching it. It's literally almost two in the morning and we're about to go on an an hour long journey with this fucking nightmare of a movie. But it's literally almost three in the morning. I know it's hilarious. So look this this movie.

To name the people in this movie that are in this movie that probably will wish it was not on their cv once they're all done with what they're doing. Ian McKellan, Jason Derulo, James Gordon, Rebel Wilson, Jennifer Hudson, Idris Elba, Judy Dench, and Ray Winstone as well. And then obviously we'd be uh, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Taylor fucking Swift is in this Uh, but none of the right. Yeah, this is the era, this is the era? What era tour part or she showed up in the Era's tour.

I watched that movie, by the way, I watched the entire eras tour movie. It's fantastic but nice. She's I mean, she's talented. Yeah, you wouldn't know it if you watch this though, because somehow this movie makes Taylor Swift look untalented the same way it makes Jennifer Hudson look untalented. Talented, oh my god.

And they're both immensely talented at what they do. But all that is to say, none of them are the main characters. Francesca Hayward, who is a ballet I guess a dancer and a ballet dancer. She's the main character, along with another actor who plays Monkus Trap Robbie Fairchild. They're the two main actors, but they're both essentially dancers who are being asked to be actors in this movie.

And it shows because there is not much of a plot in this film that at least the movie gives away. You would have to understand what the plot is if you knew the plot of Cats the Musical and the plot of Cats the Musical is all of these cats are effectively auditioning to die, well, okay, making their case as to why they want to die, and go to the heavy side layer where they transcend. But again, like that's the way the movie plays it. Yeah, I'm not saying that pretty. It's so weird how much they how much plot they try to inject into a beautiful plotless play, Like there's there's no need, you know, there was.

I forgot exactly during during one of the interviews where like there is some guy that was like, so what is it? What is cats about? And like, uh didn't like uh he respond with like, it's about cats, right, right, and it's so obvious, right, Like, uh, it's it's supposed to be a glimpse into a fantastical interpretation of what a society of cats looks like. Right, that's it. That's all it's meant to be.

And like what weird ship they get up to when no one's looking. That's it. There's no plot. There was never meant to be a plot. There is never meant to be a main character.

There's meant to be interesting characters, but there's They all get like their own, unless if you're a part of the like unnamed ensemble. But even then, I think everybody in the ensemble gets a name, right, because that's a whole other message. Where listen Cat Jellico, Cats of three Nage right, Sorry, let's break it down here from so, wait, here's the funny thing, and this is the thing we kind of have to get out in front of. So this movie came out in twenty nineteen, but there is another movie, a direct to video movie that came out in nineteen ninety eight that is the filmed essentially what would what I would consider, I'm sure what you would consider probably the definitive version of Cats, which is, yeah, the filmed on stage version.

So I'll do the thing that we normally do at the getting of every culture cast. And you've kind of given it away a little bit, but Emma, tell me a little bit about your exposure to Cats before we watched it. And then, now, what when you first saw this movie quote unquote, you can't see me doing air quotations, but it deserves it. And what you thought sitting here and rewatching it with my chuckle head over here? Yeah, So I've always been a theater nerd in my own way.

I grew up going to a lot of Broadway shows. I'm very grateful and lucky to say that that's an experience that I have, and not that I, you know, know every single play out there, far from it, but musicals have always held a very special place in my heart. Cats had evaded my viewing the nineteen ninety eight The Original Cats, the musical I did not get a chance to see, mainly because my parents saw no reason. My dad actually did see the original on a date. I asked him how that date went.

He said, not great. You just kept looking at all the cats dancing around and really wondered why we were here. But honestly it I think it was a little too abstract for me. But it never really interested my mom. My dad had already seen it, so because of that, I was never taken to see it.

It wasn't until twenty nineteen when the movie came along, and I had no interest, zero interest. I did not go see it in theaters. What it actually happened is that my parents decided to watch it at home after it had come out on like streaming, and they were like, hey, do you want to watch this movie with us? And I was like, oh, I only heard horrible things about this, Sure, so I did. And as somebody who cared about musicals, I had heard that Katz was meant to be some kind of cult classic.

It was very important to at least a large portion of the theater community, and watching this movie dumbfounded me because I had no idea how something so something so weird in a bad way, Like how is this that? How is this that what I've you know what the song memory like of all? Like how is this movie with Rebel Wilson Cat and Judy Dutchcat and Jason Derulo Kat, Like, how is how is this supposed to be? It had an adaptation of that is this what the original was? I had my own existential crisis where I decided to seek out the recording of the original musical and I just watched it on my own and I was enthralled, and I would have killed to be able to see this in person.

It is night and day. If you have only seen the movie and you have not hunted down the recorded stage performance, this is your sign to do so, because if you only think of Katz as the twenty nineteen movie, which is awful, and you have every right to think poorly, heaven can you imagine as cats? You mean the movie with Jason Drulo. No, I would would like to die now, let me die, please, because there's nothing left for me, Like yeah, just there's something so beautifully alluring about something so simple yet so abstract, like it was doing something different that no other play at the time or probably any place since, tried to do, and it did it in a way that was captivating. We didn't need a plot in order to be hooked, We didn't need to follow main characters in order to stay invested it.

We were shown incredible, beautiful glimpses into a strange world and that was all you needed. And the music was amazing, and the choreography was amazing, and the costumes were amazing, like all of it. Like you know, if you find that it wasn't like your cup of tea, I respect, but like if you are a theater nerd, at the very least you have to respect the costume design of the choreography because like, one thing that I would say is a big difference for me between the two versions is that the play is beautiful and the movie is nothing but Uncanny Valley. And so that's and that's the thing that like you've kind of gotten you've mentioned it a little bit. I think it kind of bears a little bit of a deeper dive here at the top.

And again I think it also speaks to my kind of experience with Cats before the movie came out. I got that VHS of Cats in nineteen ninety eight or nineteen ninety nine as a gift from a family friend because they heard I wanted to see it. So a turns out I've been gay for a lot longer than I knew. A Ay today me, b I saw Cats, And I have that vhs still in my parents' house in that Black Clam show that it came in, And like it's a positive I know. And it's a positive memory of two family friends that like one of them has passed away, like and and like it's a positive memory to think about, Like this was something that they got for me because they knew I really wanted it, and I still have it.

And Cats nineteen ninety eight is a really positive memory because I used to watch it all the time in the living room at my parents' house. Rum Tum Tugger is a song that is like imprinted in my head. My wife and I really, like, really love she. She really loves the musical as do I. I have it on I bought it for her on vinyl for an anniversary I think or something.

It was. It was like a nice one too. It was like an original, nice one, like not a reason. And so I really enjoy an, ironically, the original Cats. And I think, I say on ironically because and this is the thing that you were kind of getting at.

It was such a fucking big deal. And look, I'm thirty three, you're twe twenty six. We're both too young to have quote lived through it. But when Cats came out in nineteen eighty one, it was the biggest fucking deal in the history of musicals because it made musicals a fucking thing like blockbusters in movies. Megamusicals exist because of Cats.

Cats was the original one. Cats was before Ley Miz, before Phantom of the Opera, which just recently stopped running. But the last year. That's so, that's what I saw when I went to New York the well, but the one of two times I've been to New York. The other time I went to New York, I saw something that I'm glad I got the opportunity to see it, because there's been stories told about it now for years, there's been books written about it.

There was almost a there's a script on the Blacklist about it that nobody decided to pick up that I'm sure, you know a musical. I'm talking in twenty twenty eleven. It ran in twenty eleven. They had to redo it a bunch of time. Actors kept getting injured because they were falling off of the wires that they were suspended from because they were zipping and zapping around the theater.

I got an opportunity to see Spider Man turn off the dark Oh, oh my god, and anyone get hurt? No, but I saw I saw the one of the like middle iterations of it. I didn't see what it ended up being. I saw like a not the early one, but like a middle iteration, because like I've seen it since and it's like drastically different than what I saw, And I was like, holy shit, what what did I see? But like whuench of zippin' and zappen right and people falling from the sky.

But like the thing is like none of that exists without this. It's fun to hate on it at the very least. It's weird and bad enough that it's a fun watch with a friend. If you're if you enjoy watching, like hate watching things, then like this is like absolutely and put this on your list if you haven't already I say it's I say what I say because like the musical is so good that this is so bad, that this really like like and this was the thing that we were talking about where we were watching. It's like, what the fuck did you watch on the nineteen ninety eight movie or the or all the other captured versions that have been out there since that would lead you to come up with this, because oh the just and look, here's the thing, like we could talk about the butthole cut jokes, we could talk about, you know again, like when this came out in twenty nineteen, or all the other things like this being a Tom Hooper movie all that, But the thing that you have to get around, the thing that has to be wrangled immediately the moment you start talking about this movie is the decision to make them look the way that they did and do because that was the worst decision that's been made I think in terms of CGI ever, Like, yeah, it's up there, it's ugi cinema history.

It is quite literally like one of the worst visual directstions I think, maybe maybe only to be challenged by that first iteration of sonic and that was this was done by the same company, you know, wasn't yeh. When I didn't know that, I was like, are you just saying that because you know that the case? Yeah, that's sad. Yeah, m NPC Vancouver was the where the company. Uh yeah, then Oover, get your shits together.

Have they done anything that doesn't look like but here's the thing. They redid the visuals for Sonics, right, were a company that came in to fix the other company's problem. The issue seems to be from all information that has come out since, because yeah, it's now twenty twenty four. This movie came out five years ago now almost so people have since. Even James Gordon Rebel Wilson smoked the shit out of this movie when they were presenting it the Oscars the Golden Globes.

I think information has come out since that. It seems some of the problems with this movie in terms of the VFX come from Tom Hooper getting involved in a way that was slowing down production and they weren't able to really make any decisions that were efficient, and in not making efficient decisions that hampered the VFX actually being finished in time. There and again, this is just information that's come out since supposedly the team spent six months on the trailer for the movie, the two minute trailer, and then they finished the rest of the one hundred and ten minute movie in the four months leading up to the films Peace and Supposedly the VFX were being finished the day of the movie's premiere.

No, which, like, if we think about it, it makes perfect sense, because the VFX of this movie is so fucking rough and in places legitimately shit like there are there are perspective there's perspective fuck ups in this movie, like force perspective fuck ups that like make things that happen in Lord of the Rings. What Peter Jackson was able to do with that movie makes it look like, literally like it was directed by God compared to how bad this looks like it looks like someone was a cinematic god, because in this movie there are prospective fuck ups that are really hard to even ignore. They're so bad. The size inconsistencies and the size they chose, like that makes me so uncomfortable, Like she looks like a little itty bitty baby mouse, Like Victoria looks like a mouse on the bed, like with pearls like as big as her head.

And then like she's at the table with this like knife and fork, and she looks a little bigger. But then like when they're at like the milk bar, they look so much bigger like it it makes no sense. I it's so unbelievably uncomfortable to look at, not only like do their faces look weirdly plastered? ONTI like every we were talking about, like the one the cats that looked better than others, And honestly, the ones that looked the best were the old ones that were allowed to have fur, all of the all the other ones that were forced to be short hair just look like naked hairy people. Yeah yeah with tails and no ass no asshole, can't have one, no asshole.

No A. Well, and here's the other thing, So like if you look at the cats from top down, so to say, like what they have of human and what they have of cat For someone listening who hasn't seen this, because again, like I don't think either one of us would advocate watching this movie looking for something of quality. But you're gonna have a fun time just being astounded that eighty million to one hundred million dollars was spent on this nightmare of a movie and it made seventy five million dollars, which is also fucking bizarre. I guess, like I would describe the experience as like it's Halloween and you go to like your local shitty haunted house, and like there's a bunch of like teen volunteering to scare and like you go in knowing it's not going to be scary, but you're just here for a good time, right, and like that that's the vibe.

The vibe is, don't go in with any expectations other than it's gonna be something uh, probably not something anything good, right, don't compare it to anything good because you will be disappointed. So to talk about the cats from top down. So they have cat ears, and then they have human facial hair, well, human facial hair. So they have eyebrows, oh, the eyebrows, yes, And so they have eyebrows like human beings. And then they have human eyes.

They have a human nose, they have a human mouth, but then human lips, human lips. They don't have a cat nose. They have a human you know, a human nose. Some of them, I mean all of them have whiskers, but some of them are more pronounced. They're coming out of the top lips.

Some of them have eye like contacts in as Indricelba has green contacts in they look so bad. But then, like we've mentioned, if you go down from there, they have you know, hat bodies quote unquote. Some of them have clothing on, some of them don't, which is never explained. Some of them were hats, some of them don't. I guess they can just choose to wear clothes if they want to or not.

Some of them had like straight up kick, straight up fancy ass, white, white, drippy kick. Yeah. So it's never none of that's ever explained. None of that is ever anything other than just like, oh, that's what's happening here. But then they have tails like cats do.

They have purr on their bodies like cats do. But then they have human hand and I'm not saying like human hands covered in fur. I'm saying they literally have fair human hands, yeah, which, like it doesn't help the poor design choices, because again I don't understand why not just give them awe But also why not like the question, because this is the question I wanted to ask you when I was thinking about we're watching it, would like, how would you, Emma do if someone said to you, all right, we're gonna do cats and we're and you can do it any way that you want. How would you if given the opportunity to do a cat's musical movie version, how would you address the problem? Because I do think it is a problem that the movie failed at answering.

I think that the biggest failure that this movie has is also the biggest hurdle to get over, which is why almost there's no need for a cat's movie because my having a cat's movie, this is your problem inherently. How would you do this in a way that doesn't make it look like freaky human naked cat people without assholes who also have human hands and feet? But should have pause because maybe that would have helped, But maybe even I can't help this, Like what would you have done? Because I have my answer sort of, but I want to know how your answer is. I mean, so I think the easiest answer is obviously the play did something right.

I think having more hair changing the shape of the head using hair was like more like more fur, extra fur to like alter the shape of the head to make like the like the top half of the head look wider than the bottom half. Uh, and like using fur to build out more of a cat like shape, so like longer hair, longer fur like h towards the top of the head, longer fur towards like uh towards like the wrists and ankles, which will help like hide some of the uncanniness of the hands while still having hands. I don't know if pauses necessarily. I feel like CGI pause might not be the best route. I don't know.

I mean, I don't I don't know either. That's why I said, like, maybe even even that wouldn't fix it, because like it sounds like a good idea, But then I think about the ways that their hands interact with things, and like, yeah, seeing those claws up closed would probably look given how bad everything else looked, it would probably not look much better, if better at all. It might just look plucked worse. And we might have been just in another universe, me and you were saying, and those fucking pause look like shit, right exactly exactly, that's us still another universe, still being subjected to this nightmare. Because apparently it's a fixed point in time.

I'm going to put that out too. The universe Cat's twenty nineteen is a fixed point in time in every universe. This is the only way it's ever been interpreted is this horrifying, ghoulish, fucking nightmare. It is. It's so hard to watch for more than a couple minutes because here's the other thing.

And again, away I did it was like, it's hard to watch. And the reason I say that, in all seriousness, no choreography is impressive when it's being done by CGI anything. Oh Like, that's the other thing. And you kind of mentioned it, you know, the original play and the nineteen ninety eight direct to film version. That's human beings doing real choreography.

And I'm not saying that's not what's happening here. But these are all fucking mocap performances. And again that's perfectly fine. Andy Serkis has made an entire career off of doing more oh cap. He's done some of the best mocap work.

Gollum, King Kong, The Caesar, The Ape, and the New Planet of the Apes movies. That is Andy Serkis's bread and butter. But even he understands the limitations of the medium, and the limitations of the medium are you can't do it all that and that's what this is is it's an unflinching resolve to make your entire movie these weird CGI cat suit people when I think the best choice might have been to just do like practical yeah, like like I like some editing with CGI, of course, you know, like maybe doing the tails with CGI would make sense. Yeah, Like I think like it really like having it be like a very stylized, like stylized through their clothing, like make them wearing like distinct clothing, and you can you could give at like you could give actors hats and then give them cat ears, Like I don't even know why you couldn't just give them hat ears and cat knows Like That's the other thing.

If you look at the original musical the way it's presented in ninety eight, they kind of have cat knows it. They have they have painted their faces are very painted, right, and some of them have like a prosthetic cat nose. Yeah, So I not just do that, Like I don't know, like like they literally ignored what came before them for the sake of what a differentiating themselves is my only I will that's a poor assumption. But that's my assumption too, right, But like here, like I say it's a poor assumption, not because you're making it, but like, no, I guess it's a poor assumption, because like, there's no way anyone watched this and said this is better than people in spandex leotards, unless those people are out of their fucking gord, and this movie is not made by people that are unreasonable.

I genuinely think that the only people that if you showed them both side by side, you know, both the movie and the original and just said, like, hey, which is better, and like no other question, just blanket which is better? The only audience that I think might maybe forty five percent of the time say that twenty nineteen is better is children. And the only reason why I say that is because it gives them a plot to follow and children stupid to laugh at. That's a lot and a lot of like weird, gross humor jokes and like just I don't know, I feel like the only audience that would find us more enjoyable is children. I feel like children might bind the original Cats to be boring when compared to you know, Rebel Wilson cat unzipping her cat skin and eating and eating tap and eating tap dancing cockroaches while like fumbling around because ooh, fat is is the punchline, like I see you twice with two separate characters.

And that's the thing Like in the original musical that was not the case. No, like Jenny Anny Dots and Busta for Jones, like they were not they were they they were big characters, but they're not made fun of because they're fat. But like this character was old Deuteronomy and he is revered, right, he's cat Jesus could Jesus yes, fhllise forelinus ooh bilinus christ felinis catus. I mean he's I mean that's the thing that's really weird is like you have two fat characters who are literally the butt of every fat joke, and like it all feels so low brow and low hanging fruit. But there's none of that in the original.

So it almost feels like it's for kids because but like wouldn't laugh that, right, Like, I mean, it's like I said, forty five percent of the time, I'd like I want to believe. I want to believe that fifty five percent of kids wouldn't be enthralled with the stage play. I don't know if that's just wishful thinking, but if anybody is going to choose the movie over the play. It's going to be Children. The original musical was a family friendly musical, like it was popular with families traveling to New York to go for tourism.

I would say the probably like parents of today might consider some of it a little little bit more risky or even a little too scary so at some points, and I say that lightly obviously I don't feel that way, but like, you know, Room tub Tuger is very, very very sexual. You know, a lot of kidden sat as crotch. Yeah, the wiener. There's a lot of like wiener sniffing in the movie at a lot of a lot of butt and wiener sniffing of from tub Tuger specifically, And like, I don't know, I feel like maybe some parents of today might be a little weird about by that, you know, just like depending on like how young the child is that they would be taking. I could see parents being a little concerned about that because it doesn't just like happen like one time.

There's like there is at least a solid forty five seconds of like just straight up kidd and fangirling over this guy's crouching. The original well, and that's the other thing that I was that I was saying when we were because we were watching the movie and then we would pause it and then we would watch some of the like the original on YouTube. And I'm just gonna say it because I think, I mean, we both were joking about it most of the time. Like the original is so unbelievably gay, and it is like over the top and it's like everything that you would want of like that early eighties musical theater experience where it's like it's over sexualized, but it's cats and they're shaking their asses and they're wiggling their hips and like it's so fucking bizarre.

But at the same time, it's like I said, it's very queer coded, like Rum tum Tugger, very queer coded, Like there's a lot, there's a lot, and it's like it's a lot of people jumping around in leotards in very might fitting clothing. Like again, it's have you forgotten mister Mestopheles taking a literal rainbow ribbon out of his ha and like running around happily on the stage. Yeah, And also the insane gay tension between him and Remtumsucker, And that's the thing it's like helpable tension with a knight. But that's the thing, like there's none of that and the like there's no Oh, it's so hetero. Oh, it's so painfully heteroz But it's even worse than that.

It takes all of the fun and bomb bast out of the musical. And I'm not saying and like I'm I'm not saying you're right, because you are. It is like painfully boringly like made for normy people. Like it's like it's so I think one of the reasons it's so boring is because all of the fun is taken out and that fun comes with just like a level of bomb bast that I mean, the original musical is a lot like the colors I would say I associate with the original are like bright white and dark black and then these like oranges that they use to highlight these characters. This is like curd brown.

It's just like brown and brown. And like all of the fellow songs are just watered down versions of the original. Some of them take the melody out altogether to the point where they just sound like slam poetry. Yeah, mister Christoph is a real It is a It is a victim in this movie of or or composition. Honestly, the one that upset me the most was Mungo jerryan norple Teasers song, because it's just it's so so boring to listen to it, and it goes on for so long and just comparatively too like and it changes their tone completely, Like they went from like fun, lovable tricksters to like just straight up menaces and like I understand that, Like, yeah, we're we're highlighting different types of cats and whatever, like that's that's the point of the originals, to shed light on the different types of cats that you might encounter and what that could mean, you know, recontextualized as a cat'sty.

But like, I don't it just it sucked all of the fun personality out of everyone. No, like it just it might as well have been in black and white with like how boring it felt like no color, no melody. Uh. They tried to make up for that with like this is this is where it got me. They really cared about the setting in the movie.

They had a lot of different settings throughout the movie. They seemed to care a lot about the set, you know, a lot about the environment, and like usually that's fine, but I think that's where they get built so much on the sizing, and like the uncanniness is because like in the original, it takes place in a dump, Like the setting is literally a garbage dump, and because of that, we're not constantly looking for things for scale. But when you're in a home, at a dinner table, out, at a window, at the door, in a theater, in the trash cans, in a chandelier, like it just they're adding so many things where you could be like, oh, well, the cats look smaller now, but now they look bigger because you're constantly referencing the very real things that are around them, Whereas like having it in a literal dump, there's you're not constantly looking at like this is how big this thing is, and this is how big this thing is, and so because of that, that's how big they all are.

It really destroys so much of the immersion of believing that like cats could look and act like this and be like this and exist in this world. And like when you're watching the play, I think something that sticks out to me is how like easy you are to say, yep, that's a bunch of cats on a stage, like obviously they're people, but like you're able to like have a suspension of disbelief. There is a level of like first obviously the way that they move, which is gorgeous. The choreography is so expertly done. But then like on top of that, the way that their costumes are and the fact that it makes sense that they're all outside into dump like strays, and then of course we have their own little society, especially like it's either they're all strays or there's like, uh, there's also like house cats that are like indoor outdoor cats, and they all gather at this dump and that's where they share these stories, and it just it, it just makes so much more sense, like less is more, and all they did with this movie is more more settings, more places, more environments, more flashy effects.

The more cats. I think there were significantly more cats. Oh a, yeah, there's a movie like fifty, like double double the amount of cats. And then of course like more quote unquote plot. Uh, and like giving the audience a main character to cling to in like the most condescending way possible, Like it literally just feels like exposition after exposit, Like it's literally song exposition song exposition, song exposition, Like there's no flow.

There's no flow. And if you're going to try to inject a plot into this, if you're going to try to pass it off like this was meant to have a plot all along, in a main character and a story arc, then you can't just say verbatim like Okay, it's gonna be a bunch of songs with this is what's going on, and then another song, this is what's happening, Like it's just it feels like my hand is being held, but my hand is slowly being stuffed into a like shrudder. You know. Yeah, well it's it's painful condescension. Well, and it's again like, as a filmgoer, you put your trust in the director and the screen writer and the cinematographer and the actors that everyone is putting in there the best effort that they can to make the best product.

And look, there are plenty of people that spent plenty of time on this movie. And that's not to say that they didn't do hard work and that they didn't learn how to dance and sing and all these other things. But you know what, objectively they fail, and subjectively we both agree they failed. And like the problem is, like it's hard to say objectively you failed because so much of subjectivity and objectivity are tied up in one another now because we don't want to have a line between the two and people's opinion and now being fact. And it's like, look, this movie is objectively bad because the decision that they made with the CGI is so distracting that anything else that they've done is also suffering.

But like you just said, it's worse than that, because there's nothing there. Even if you can somehow fucking force yourself to ignore the CGI, which you can't because it's, oh, it's on your eye. You're bombarded with it constantly, and then you're also bombarded with like, just when you thought you saw the new worst thing, there's a new, new worst thing, and then there's a new, new new worst thing the next minute. Because this movie just given that it only took them four months to finish the movie, and they were finishing at the day of it looks like it you can tell if this had been a video game, we'd be playing it and Bethesda would have made it because it would be buggy beyond fucking belief. And that's what this feels like.

Not only does it feel like an unfinished CGI product, but it feels like a first pass of a script because like you said, there there's not any real meaningful character interactions. No, and not that there needed to be, because again in the original musical, there really aren't. It was all implied and right, they know each other already, like exactly there you go, cause we're again we're getting a glimpse. We're not getting our handheld in the original, like the way that you see like Monkstrop take care of like the kittens. He never says and it is my job to take care of the kitten.

It's just shown like when uh, like when anything, like uh, I guess god, the fucking Macavity. Jeez, it's late like when Macavity shows up in the original, like all of the kittens are like hiding in like some kind of like part of like a sewer or something like hiding behind something, and Monkeystrap is there like in like literally standing in front of them, like guarding them, like and what I love about that is that there was they didn't need to tell us like these are the kittens and this is their caretaker. He is very good at watching them and making sure they don't get into trouble, Like it's just shown the way that you know kittens are whisked away when they're trying to reach out to Grizabella, Like none of that is said, none of that is spoken, but it's so visually understood.

It's so show not tell, and all all this movie does is tell. And then yet you're left more confused because you're like why did any of it need to happen like this? Like why are they competing to die? Like why why is there this competition? Like this competition did not happen in the original that was so off putting, Like why why all of a sudden do all the main characters all want to be reborn?

Most of them have good lives? And I think they even mentioned that, like in like in the movie itself, like Victoria's like why does Jenny Enny Dotts like want to have a new life? And She's like, I just can't be in this kitchen anymore. It's like why you seem to have a pretty good life, Like you're a fat hat who was enjoying life and eating cockroaches and not being bothered by seemingly any anything. Like literally she is, she's she has a whole house at her disposal, and she just does whatever the fuck she wants.

That is her character. Same with Bungo, Jerry and Rumpleteaser, like why would they want to? Like? The only one who realistically makes sense is the one cat who does end up going to the heavy side layer, which is Grizabella, the glamour cat who sings. I guess what would be considered the most mainstream famous song from this memory?

Which most iconic? I guess it's and look, you know, we listened to Elaine Page version, the original from the nineteen ninety eight one, the filmed one, and it is a fucking house bringer. It brings the house down all and it's it's because of the power of her voice and really nothing else, Like it's the way she's able to convey emotion without having to physically break down, like you can tell the like in the way that she conveyed like the the volume at certain points, like and everything is so clear, and yet she's able to convey supreme sadness without having to cry like it's just it is a It is the juxtaposition of her grappling with hopelessness and hopefulness, and it is so easy to see that and then like in the movie, like Henper Hudson, Kat does a good job in terms of like I am like this is my character Grizabella, and I can sing, but then it's ruined by like this forced fake crying of course, the snot dribbling down her face at all times, like onto her lip, which is just so unngod, like just wipe it away.

And it's and we see it in very close up, which is just I and you know what I wonder is it this like is it this Tom Hooper thing of like, oh, I want it to be you know, like I mean, because the thing with I mean wasn't the thing with lay Miss like oh it was all all the vocals were recorded on on set. It wasn't like they didn't do anything in post pro. They weren't like going into the studio. Oh it sounded like it. Yeah, And like and that's the thing, like, you know, lay Miz is something that I had just recently seen and it I mean, like I don't know, like you know, we were thinking about doing that initially and then we you know, some things happened and we kind of pivoted to Kats.

But the thing about Ley Miz that kind of stuck with me. Is at least that was a better adaptation of what I assumed the fucking musical is. Like at least it's like the movie being like, Wow, that was weird and bad. Yeah, like it. Like the thing that I didn't like about lay Mis was how bad everybody was It's singing, because pretty much everybody was, especially Russell Crowe, who like sticks out like a sore thumb the way Pierce Bras and than Mama Mia does.

Uh, it's like it's talk singing again in that movie. It's and it's that same talk singing here. And it's like, is this just the Tom Hooper thing of taking a musical that is beloved by effectively fucking everybody? Lea Miz and Katz is essentially beloved by fucking everybody too. It's a it's a more niche audience.

But yes, like is it is? It? Is it a Tom Hooper thing to come into those projects and just like take them but for them, Yeah, take them in like the worst direction possible because again, like the people you cast in Ley Miz are like laughable choices, some of them like literally laughable when they sing on screen. All I want to do is like snigger because they're so fucking untalented at singing a song because they're actors not singers. It's almost like people who can act and sing may not be able to do one or the other, or they can't do both, or they can only do one, like and some of them can't even act in their ballet dancers, you know what I mean, Like, didn't you got those people like the actor dancer and the singer actor Like it's it's all like, I'm not gonna say you should only do the thing that you're good at, But when you try to force a square peg into a round hole on a big stage like this, you can tell it's so clearly forced.

All of this so oh clearly forced. The jokes are forced, the timing is forced, the plot is forced. The celebrities that they got to play the characters are forced at That's where I wanted to go next, because that's the thing, if anything sticks out just as much for me other than again, the fucking design of this movie, overall, the grand choices that were made that took this in the weird direction that we see. That's the other thing that sticks out for me is just the amount of people who apparently their families were being held hostage to make this movie, like Taylor Swift, Judy Dench, Ian McKellen, Jason Derulo, James Gordon did this shit willingly? There's nothing Yeah, Rebel Wilson, who like you know, I'm glad that none of these people's careers were ended by this movie.

I think they were big enough to evade this ending their careers, other than maybe like the actors who were stage dancers, like ballet dancers, like Francesca Hayward and Robbie Fairchild. Yeah, I haven't heard her in anything else, Racily of you no, or Laurie Davidson, the actor who plays mister Mephistopheles. So like, none of them. Like I'm not saying they don't have any they don't have a career anymore, but like this is like, this is such a if this were on your resume, you might want to like explain what was going on because like it's it's it's notoriously listen, man, I had to pivy rent, right, And that's what it feels like, the only excuse to be a part of It's Like I think maybe Taylor Swift had a little bit more involvement, given that she wrote Beautiful Ghosts, which you are you contend to me is the only good song from this even though it is literally an original song.

In my opinion, I out of all of the songs, all like all of the like if you were to compare like the entire soundtrack to the original soundtrack, it is night and day in terms of one how good it sounds overall, which is so funny to me because like you're watching the the like recordings of the play, like that's not the cast recording, that is the stage recording, and it sounds better than this monstrosity which could have had post processing, and I guess they chose not to and not right the thing is like, oh we're I think they clearly like they did more with this than they did with LEI mis because lame is like I know what they did. They just recorded it on set and it really sounded like it, especially in some of the more confined scenes with Hugh Jackman again talk singing.

That's the other thing, Like you have actors who are talk singing because they really aren't talented at singing as much as their stage counterparts. I'm not saying they're not talented at all. I'm just saying that the people that do this on stage, that is what they do for a living, exact create day of their lives, and that is at they things and they sing. When you are on Broadway, you need to do all three and not every mainstream actor can do all three or be taught to do all three, and it shows. So yeah, Beautiful Ghosts, I mean so written by Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift is an icon. She's a bajillionaire for good reason. She made a lot of money performing a lot this past year, and good for her, she donates a lot of her money, so I'm not mad about it. That being said, Beautiful Ghosts is a very melodically interesting song in comparison to like the lack of melody, like I'm starving for melody. The only other melody we get is like the Jellico Cats like opening song, because if they didn't do that, people would have literally rioted.

So like we get that taste like wow, this is weird, but at least like they have like the this is fun. It's a fun vibe, and then we lose it all the way until we get to Beautiful ghost and then it's not really a fun vibe, but at least it's melody, and it's it's a pretty song. That being said, I don't think it's sung like particularly well. She has a great range, like she she is able to sing all of the notes. She does not struggle, but like in terms of like smoothness, it's not there.

And one thing that that that I wanted to bring up because of that, there were choices in the original play, specifically with Victoria, who was not meant to be a main character. However, she was basically the representative of the group of kittens. She was the most like iconic looking kitten out of everyone, and because of that she did get her own dance solo. And what I love about the lore of this is that so she was a very very talented ballerina. And as I showed Chris earlier because I wanted him to watch this back because with the new lens, because I had done a lot of research and learned about this when I was doing My Cat's hyperfixation becoming a massive fangirl of it.

It's like it's something that like if you don't know to look for, you will miss. And it's the fact that while she is doing this solo only one on stage ballet performance. This very talented ballerina is shieking and like she is struggling to find her balance, her limbs are shaking, and you would be like, that's that's not a very talented ballerina. But the thing is is that that was on purpose to show the fact that she is indeed a kitten. She is learning, she is weak.

She is graceful because she's a cat, but even so, like she's getting her footing, she's like she needs to grow, and the whole point of that was to show her age and apparently it's very technically difficult for a very well trained ballerina to pretend like they don't have the strength that they do, which is insane, and like it was just so beautifully done and conveys exactly what it needs to if you know to look for it. And then the way that the movie shits all over that is that we know Victoria is a kid, and we know she's young, but then her all of her dancing is incredibly smooth despite being literally like just thrown into an alley way in a burlapsed sack and being disoriented, She's just like, oh, Cat's Society and she starts dancing as if she's always danced.

And I want to say that her having a shaky voice for Beautiful Ghosts could be a callback to her being shaky as a dancer in the original, but I if she's not going to be a shaky dancer, then she shouldn't have a shaky voice like it just it doing the movies work for it. It just pissed me off, like the moment I saw how smooth she danced, because I had only seen cats like the one like the movie one time, and like i'd seen it that first time and the like never again, I did not touch it since, and so I had forgotten just how like smooth she dances. And don't get a wrong this, this ballerina in the movie is very talented, but it just does not fit the same way. It doesn't make sense in the same way. And so of course she's not as talented as a singer because she's a ballerina, and so that shows in her performance.

And they don't do anything to help for post production as far as I can tell. And even though she is like a decent singer, to have a solo with very quiet backing instrumentals, just your one soul voice with a simple but powerful melody and have be not good, Like it's the most listenable song in comparison to everything else, but with everything else, like, it's just I would much rather listen to the original, because there's nothing in the in the movie that holds a candle to how amazing the original sounds and so beautiful ghosts, like it's it's its own standalone thing, like there's nothing to compare it to. And yet it's still falls short for me because I can't even justify it with her being a kid, and which like would have made a lot of sense.

I don't know, it just it just bothers me. It just bothers me how much they did not care about the source material and like they were willing to overlook literally everything to tell it in their own way, and their own way was bad. Like that is what it comes down to. Well, and that's I mean, that's the thing. I mean, you know, you mentioned just kind of a general misunderstanding of the ideas and concepts behind what they're trying to kind of present with some of these characters.

And I mean I want to go back to this idea of like just including all of these random actors for seemingly no reason. I mean again, like Idris Elba, I think his character design is the absolute worst in the area out of all of them. He looks horrible, looks like a naked guy. He just looks like a naked man dancing around. And like, like I always make this joke about Idris Elbow.

This guy can't catch a fucking break when it comes to being in good, like good, big budget movies. Because I think about this, I think about The Dark Tower. It's like it's weird because he's such a talented actor, and I have everybody in this movie is talented. Holy shit, Judy Dench, Jennifer Hudson, I mean again, like you mentioned Taylor Swift. But it's like somehow this movie, like I said, could convince me that Jennifer Hudson and Taylor Swift have no no reason to be singing.

Because again, like the thing is, you know, you go and listen to the original versions of the songs and listen to their versions, Like you just mentioned, their versions add nothing to the conversation about about like like oh, like a reimagined version or anything. And that's the other thing. It's just worse. Well, and here's the thing, Like, I think about something we could have covered this month, and it's something that I love in spite of the fact that it is vastly different than the stage play. Sweeny Todd Tim Burton movie is completely different from the stage play, like completely different, tonally different, Like the art direction is vastly different.

Like the versions that I've seen are not necessarily all the same, but they seem to be kind of consistent in what they're getting at. But the movie is injected with a tim Burton thing that Tim Burton does, and he works with Johnny Depp and Hella Bottom Carter and he makes them look fucking weird, and he makes weird choices that only Tim Burton would make. Okay, it is really very different tone from the play. But yet I can appreciate the movie for what it's doing, reinterpreting the musical in a film form. This doesn't even make a case for itself to exist because it is just, by my approximation, a filmed, big budget CGI version of the musical.

They don't do anything different with any of the songs, like the only one they maybe do something different with negatively, And you mentioned the rumplteaser song, and that one is vastly different, but like they change them negative if they change them at all. But for the most part, they're just like a very generic redo of like a redoing of the song, like a reinterpreting, but it's not even reinterpreting, like run most you're kind of different, but most that was the most I would say Rondo Tucker was the most interesting in terms of, like, Okay, this is a singer trying to differentiate his version versus the original version. And even though I don't personally like the changes, I don't really like him as the character at least, like he tried to inject his personality into it in a way that was interesting.

I think we just make fun of Jason Derulo, like in general, I mean, he's not either of our cup of tea. He's kind of cringe like he's said, like cringe TikTok, dude now, like, but he he does as we were saying, like, well we were watching it. He has great vocal control and he is an incredibly vast rain in terms of pitch. It's just a matter of like what he did with that didn't sound better or even on the same level as the original. It just wasn't as fun, but it was different and not in a bad way, just not in a great way.

And so that was just like again, it's just like another letdown. And then of course it's juxtapost with him almost like eating Victoria's foot. Yeah. I was gonna say, like, mister Mephistopheles is different, but also again like not in a fun Yeah, he literally is just a little little shy Oh no, little I can't do anything, kitty like, he's just like he's every he's like he's like that tweet little guy that's so cute and like you want it, Like he's like Eddie Redmain adjacent. It's just victorious, Like I can fix him.

Yeah, right, that guy, like the vibe, it's so off putting knowing how like bomb bastic and confident he was in the original. Like, yes, he he was quiet, but quiet doesn't mean shy. Quiet doesn't mean a lack of confidence. It just means that usually you appreciate talking less and being in the background. That has nothing to do with how confident you are in your own abilities.

And they just spent so long being like, come on, mister Mustopheles, you can do it and it's just so it goes on for so long and just like all the pauses in the song make it unlistenable. It's just it it makes no sense. And then obviously, like the level of power that he has is so undefined and it's such like it makes no sense, like all of the characters that have like magical abilities, basically Mustopheles and Macavity are the ones with like the primary like magic powers. But while they are described his magic powers in your original, it's clear that those are supposed to be like analogies and metaphors for you know, a cat, you know, a magic cat. You know is this cat where you think you hear him in the hallway, but really he's upstairs, Like it's not that he has disappears for days but then still comes back, like they literally say that in the saw.

They're like it's like but then he can control like cards, make them float in the air. He can like make like musical instruments float and play in the air and like a full symphony, like but when why, Like it's like having seen lay Miz and now seeing this and I hadn't seen Lambiz before I watched this the first time, I watched it back in twenty twenty two. Uh, this honestly, like you know what, this reminds me of. This kind of reminds me of lay Biz with cats, Yeah, because like because like the set design and everything feels so like it's the real world and it's and like all of that real worldiness makes this even less fun because, like you've said, like all the songs are like kind of like slam poetry and like they're more spoken than they are sung, and it's like so you're taking a lot of the fun out of the songs, and now you're taking a lot of the fun out of the setting too, because instead of it being this like eighties like and that's the thing.

They could have set this in the eighties and like drenched it in neon and like like pastel colors, like do something fucking weird. Instead, it's just let's make this the most on the nose interpretation, which is it literally takes place in England. These are British cats. They are dancing around and they are literally cgi cat people this time. Like they interpret like that's the thing when you look at the stage play and you look at this, they interpreted it the most literal fucking way that they could and why, Like why because, like you mentioned, with so much of this, it was never about what it literally fucking meant.

It's about just showing us how weird cats are. Because as someone who has two cats and grew up with cats, the only word I would use to describe cats is weird. Cats are weird and love right, but like, yeah, no, ultimately at their core, like cats are like the thing that I think draws us to cats in a way that we're not, Like, not that we're not drawn to dogs, but I think it is how mysterious they are, right, Like there's something about them that's just like an intangible thing. And like when I look at my cat, who is a Maine coon, there's something about him that just like it just there. It sparks something in me that I don't know how to describe it because that's something only a cat, and like I've never felt that with any of the dogs we've ever owned, And like that's weird for me because I, like I said, I did grow up with cats, but for the most part I did and was a dog person up until our next door neighbor said I've got this little Maine coon cat and I don't know what to do with it.

And I was like, oh shit, here we go. And like it is, cats are weird and missious and you look at them and you wonder what they're thinking, because it seems like they're thinking about more than just nothing. And there's what I was supposed to capitalize on, and like, instead they just went mysterious means surrealist horror. Like that's what it feels like. And it's like, no, mysterious is fun and alluring, and you have none of that.

There's no charm, there's no charisma. It's all so bland. The Runtum tugger performance from the nineteen ninety eight musical The filmed musical version has more charisma than in those four minutes than this entire movie has. And oh, by the way, so that's the other thing we haven't mentioned yet. This movie's not an hour twenty or an hour thirty or an hour forty.

It's an hour and forty nine minutes. It's almost two hours two hours. It's shy of two hours by ten minutes. But I will tell you, folks, if you've never seen it, it be like by the hour mark, you feel like you've been watching it for two hours. By the hour and a half mark, you feel like you're watching it for three I thought you're gonna say three days.

Yeah, it drags in a way that I like, is it drags in a way that bad movies drag. And I'm not talking about like so bad they're fun, because this movie is so bad it's fun, But this movie is things are happening. Yeah, But then like it's just like, Okay, we get it. They're they're bad dancing, Okay, we get it. They're talking at the camera.

Okay, we get it. We're looking at the scene, but the scene doesn't really matter. Like it's it's all these like weird little quiet moments and or like uh zooming in on details or letting something just go on for too long. And it's like this movie could have been so much shorter. Yeah, and like I don't and again, like it could have been shorter if they had just shored up all of the unnecessary visuals.

But it also could have been shorter if again, you just hew closer to the idea of what the original was, which is it doesn't need to have I mean it needed to have structure because it was turned into a movie movie, But I don't know why you couldn't have just staged a really extravagant stage version. I mean, I don't think best I can tell the unless something has changed in the last couple of years. They're not doing a movie version of Hamilton the version that Disney Plus did, is it? Like that's and I don't. I don't think there needs to be as a movie, Like I know there's a movie of Wicked coming out, and I don't know if it needs to be liked.

Did Dina Menzel not do a good enough job? Did Kristin Chen not do a good enough job to like cement those as the definitive versions, Like no, we need we need Arianna Grande to come in with her SpongeBob boyfriend and and and just ruin the vibe. Well, and that's the thing. It's like, I don't, I don't. How are we supposed to believe she's Glinda Good?

I mean, come on, I don't think. I don't think remaking musicals into movies is a bad idea. I just think this is a really poor example of how you adapt something that, in a lot of ways is unadaptable and unadaptable more or less intentionally because it exists in a way that stage plays can exist and films can't. The expectations of the audience are different from the get go. And you know what, while you might want to fit Cats into a box of a narratively driven story about a young cat who learns about the Jelico Pats and blah blah blah and joins the cult, you fucking missed the mark.

And not only did you miss the mark, you're off in the Lulu land somewhere because you have made it clear to me and everybody else who watches this movie that you're just generally misunderstanding what Cats is about to begin with. And if that was the first stumbling block, that's like the biggest one. Like if you can't Wow not make Cats the movie about cat, why wasn't it just animated cats? Like why wasn't it just cgi cats? Like really they did it with Lyon King Disney did like two years later, Like why, I don't know, don't give him ideas, I know, but like at the same time, that's what I'm asking because if you're gonna do this, why not just do that?

Like why not just have anthropomorphic cats dancing? Or again, just hyper stylize their costumes. You know, it would have been like, actually really nice. Imagine if like Disney took it and did like a like their old two D style, but you're animated like that. Like but I'm talking like Arista Caath you know, okay, you know, yeah, sure, sure yeah, Like imagine if they did like this in the style of Aristocath.

So that could be really fun, especially if they went crazy with the designs. It's funny you mentioned that because in the nineties, Amblamation, which is Amblend, which was speeled he his production his the you know, the animated arm of his production company, Amblamation. Amblamation was going to do an animated version of this and like I for me, it's like no, because the studio closed. They only released three movies. We're Back, Bifle and I think, but I think they did Fifel Goes Rifle Goes West, Yeah, but what goes West?

We're Back and Balto Wait Dinosaurs Were Back? Yeah yeah, grow back the clock to the Dawn of Time and sing the song with me. And I've only seen it once. That was I grew classic. Though We're Back was a movie I saw a lot growing up.

Doctor screw Eyes that is a thing that is stuck with me for a very long time. That is a very weird movie. Stars Jay Leno as an alien I think, or no, is he a dinosaur? John Goodman plays the t Rex. That's all I remember.

But can you imagine like an animated version of this? Like, I think you're right, Like I think really, like even in twenty twenty or twenty nineteen or twenty ten or two thousand and five or nineteen ninety, anytime anyone in the past thought about adapting this, I honestly think that should have been the only decision, especially given that like post nineteen ninety eight, do we really need another live action version of this? But again, like I could also see, like the plot that they were using for this movie, I could see that making so much more sense in a movie actually targeted towards the younger audience sure, rather than whatever, like this is like floating somewhere between children young adults.

It's an animated movie that's live action. Yeah, it's just it. It's so weird and bad, And I feel like if they were to get like the original like actors from the play, or at least most of them, to like reprise their roles for the two d maybe like changing up a few obviously Victoria, if we're gonna say, like it would how the same plot as the movie, just better. You know, Victoria doesn't really have you know, a voice in other than being a part of the ensemble in the original. So like, you know, maybe some of the main characters we recast, but like you keep you know, Grizabella the same, you keep rem tub Tugger the same, you keep monk Astrap the same, like the mistophel is the same, Like you keep like the big ones.

And then like maybe you switch up some of like the the other minor characters just for the sake of you know, doing something a little bit different. But like just like imagine how much more interesting that would have been it could have taken place like timeline wise, like over a few days, rather than just like all crammed into like one weird night, one weird night with a bunch of human cat This summer, Tom Hoover is directing himself, apparently out of a job. Like and that's the thing. I look and looked and looked. It doesn't seem like it ended his career as a director.

But like this is considered to be one of the worst movies ever made, like and she don't know if you do come back from direction right, Like like if you if you care about the original and you haven't seen the movie, I wouldn't. I wouldn't watch it. Like it's genuinely like the fact I saw it in the opposite order. I saw the movie first, and then I went back to watch you know, the recording of the play, and because of that, it gave me hope. So I can only assume that if I do it in the opposite order, it would make me lose faith in humanity.

So like, don't do that to yourself. You can live about it. It's really it's it really does not need to be consumed. That being said, if you haven't consumed either, then yeah, I have a fun night and Bible says, a substance with a friend and uh, and enjoy enjoy the weird and then maybe go back and watch the original to appreciate it. But like, it's just so disappointing on so many levels and so strange on so many levels, and not in the fun way.

The only fun thing about it is making fun of the characters and the fact that I just kept going Judy Dench Cat, Jason Derulo cat like they because they're not that's not well deuteronom eats to me, that's not like from them, Tucker to me, Like it's just they're just they're the actors in in Weird Cat CGI. It just feels like they're playing themselves. And that's and like that is where the so fun it's bad aspect of this movie is for me. It's like, it's just this is like one of the weirdest fucking things I've ever seen. She's one of the worst things I've ever seen as well, but it's it is also one of the weirdest things because like you said, like I'm really shocked that someone like Taylor Swift is the CGI cat in this movie.

Like cause even like now where Taylor Swift is five years later like sake, like I don't know if she wishes she did could take this back, but like there may have been a point in the last five years where she said, fuck it. I can't believe I was in that cat's movie, and I would believe that those words left her mouth. Oh yeah, And that's the thing, like you know Tom who Hooper, he made himself no friends in the making of this movie. I guess with the CGI people, they have claimed as far as saying that it was akin to slavery having to deal with him the way that he treated them, and like again and like, what's what the sad thing is is like, you know, you hear about this in video game production that like there's these grind weeks where these people are staying in the office and working ninety hour weeks and like, but then a video game comes out and it's Spider Man two on the PS five and it's one of the best games of the year, and it's like, Okay, So I'm not saying it justifies it, but if at the end of the day, the product that comes out of it is amazing, then while it sucked for everybody, I think those people are probably proud of what they did at least, right at least we could say that this is they can't say that here.

No, it seems like not only did Tom Hooper maybe get himself in a position where he may not be able to do a big studio film again because he's made too many enemies in the VFX world, which is part of a big studio movie. At least in some corner of big studio movies. But also he made it clear that like he can't work with other people who expect a director to do a certain thing and be civil with them, and he can't do that. And like, if you make that name for yourself, you just don't get to do it again. Like Josh Trank, same thing happened to him with the Fantastic Four movie, Like he just made too many enemies with people who are in the industry all the time working on these projects that that travels, that kind of information gets out there.

And Universal and Tom Hooper have never addressed any of this because again, like this movie in a lot of ways is radioactive. Like Universal probably wishes that they, like if there was a movie in the last ten years that they could probably write off of existence and collectively make us all forget about This is probably one or two on that list, Like this is that's how bad everything around this movie is. And that's how bad everything about this movie is. And like, genuinely it is one of the worst movies ever made because there's nothing entertaining about it in the way that they wanted it to be. It's just bad and weird, and like you said, it's almost surrealist horror, because if you look at it as a body horror movie, it's fucking strong.

Like everything. It's like, are these like, oh is it people trapped in cat bodies and they're like help less, get us out of here? Like no, wonder they want a new life? Right? Yeah, Like God, does that mean we get to go back to our human bodies?

I wonder how much pain they're like? Right, But it's like but it's not that, but like it's so bizarre, and you know, I always joke about, like what if someone is listening to this one hundred years from now, Like what would they think? And what are they thinking about? And what are they being entertained by? What do you think societies would think if they saw this one hundred years from now, they'd be like, what a weird time that people were existing in where this was the thing that anybody thought was okay to the tune of one hundred million dollars.

Because that's the thing that's where I land in all of this. It's like so many weird decisions were made by so many people, and either the ball was passed on to someone else, sent someone else to said what the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit, Like it just seems like this is one of the best examples of like, just every bad decision was made at every turn by every because that's the only way you get a movie where Judy Dench is the only realistic looking cat out of the button. This is such a weird sentence, right, Judy Dench is the only realistic looking human cat in this entire movie is a new sentence uttered by me? Right now, it's the truth, Like, somehow Judy Dench is the only one who actually looks like a human cat, believably and like a yeah, what a weird thing to say, Emma.

Final final thoughts on Cats. The original is amazing and if you haven't seen it you absolutely should. It is an eighties fever dream in the best way. It is everything you could ever want if you like musical theater, you like eighties music, you like fun choreography, and you like something that's a little different and a little weird. This is so up here, Alley, and it is so worth the watch.

If you haven't yet, you don't need to watch Cats twenty nineteen unless you really really want to get high with a friend and laugh really hard for two hours otherwise just not necessary. It just it is a bastardization of something that was beautiful and unique and different and fun and colorful in both literally and metaphorically. It does nothing but shit all over the original concept. And I don't know how it can even do that because they don't even have assholes. Emma out, That's all I got, right, I drop?

Can I follow that up? Well? Yeah? Or I have spent going on almost ten years now doing this this podcast. I have seen more movies than most non movies podcasters have in terms of watching movies on a daily basis, I watch one a day essentially at this point, like, and that's just the way it is, Like movies have become a part of my fiber of my being.

And that's why people like myself and people like yourself do these things, because we love something so much that we want to have an outlet to not stop talking about it, or we talk about it with people that we don't get to talk about it with in person, because shockingly, Emma and I have still never met. Uh hopeing directify that, but again my point is, yeah, I haven't met everybody that I work with. But my point is we do this because we love the things that we're talking about or that we're interested in, both broadly or specifically, be it movies in general or a specific movie that you just can't get out of your head and you want to talk about it, and you want to do an entire podcast about that one movie.

Look at The Good Fellas Every Minute podcast, which was three hundred podcast episodes, because that movie is, you know, two and a half hours long, and they did every minute of the movie as an ep episode. That's super cool. That's insane, right, that's hyperfixation beyond belief. But you know what, it's awesome that someone likes it and wanted to do that idea that much. I say all of that because this movie is the best and worst example of general misunderstanding of what made like you've said, general misunderstanding of what made something such a popular piece of pop culture that it's described as BC before Katz and Ad Andrew Dominance as in Andrew Lloyd Webber because Cats is what put him on the map as a playwright, as someone who is able to be Lord Lord Weber.

Now like Lord Lloyd Weber, that's his name. Why because of Cats, that's why, because of a bunch of people dancing around at spandex really because of ts Eliot, but because of Cats, And why do we have Cats twenty nineteen because of Cats nineteen eighty one and Cat's nineteen ninety eight. It's nineteen ninety eight doesn't exist if not for nineteen eighty one, because that musical being such a big deal. It had to be such a big deal to be adapted into just a movie version of the stage play. You don't get to that point if it's not popular.

What there didn't need to be more than that in terms of live action, And that's where this movie stumbles is it doesn't justify its existence from frame one and at frame twenty one thousand or whatever it is. At the end of this movie, you're not only questioning why did you watch it, but you're also questioning why did anyone else invest an ounce of time into this? Why did anyone anvinced an ounce of money into this? And why did anyone who's in this movie agree to be in it? Other than because, like I joked about earlier, their families were being held hosted, or someone had naked pictures of them that they didn't want to get out.

It's just the prestige of Cats can only carry you so far. And if you got involved with this because of the prestige of Cats, I get it, because Cats is a mega musical. There's a prestige in it. But so many people's careers are gonna have Cats on it forever, and not everybody's career can survive that, And that's the shame is there may be people who never work in the industry again because they were associated with this movie, and that would be the biggest shame in my opinion, because it's a bad movie. But I don't think anyone needed to like be out of a job permanently.

But I'm sure there have been and will be because again, it is widely considered to be and is a critical and commercial failure, and no amount of making amends or apologizing or distancing yourself from it can change the fact that the movie wasn't a success. So it's just it's a spectacular failure. Though it wasn't a quiet it was a failure in a way that like you drew attention to the fact that you were a failure from the moment you showed a trailer that was again, like you've mentioned, I will echo it Uncanny Valley throughout the entire movie, like absolutely, yeah, you can't. You can't get out of you can't get out of the way of the Uncanny Valley, and the Rolling Stones article talking about like, yeah, there's other problems, but the VFX is the big problem.

Like yep, pretty much, like there's literally nothing that you can do to ignore how bad it is. And yeah that, Yeah, Cat's twenty nineteen is just real fucking bizarre. If you could ask the personified movie of Cat's twenty nineteen one question, what would it be, how badly do you want to do? Mine would have been why were you made right? And its answer would be even I don't know?

Or also possibly moneyh So I mean again, like people would and saw this because of the name Cats mattering to people at one point, but after watching this right, like, yeah, there were people that were like, Taylor Swift is in this movie, I'm gonna go see it. It's like, oh boy, yep, use it it. Oh, check your expectations at the door, folks. So on that note, we'll take a break, play some ads, and play a preview for what we're talking about on the next episode from weirding Way Media, Cambridge, and With Shan is a podcast about two guys obsessions, passions, and hobbies. Those two guys are Mark Bigley, host of Wick Up Heavy Recollections of Horror, and Ronald Zuriggian, host of the Skelevator YouTube channel.

Each month, we talk about the toys, comics, movies, books, TV shows, and other cultural phenomena that captured our imaginations and helped shape who we are today. From Masters of the Universe to Saturday Night Live Star Wars, to Harry Houdini the Muppets to The Elephant Man. Ronnie and Mark dive deep into the recesses of their minds to pull out treasured memories of things lost but never forgotten. Join us on the first Tuesday of each month over at weirdinwaymedia dot com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Join me Jamie Benning on the Filmmentaries podcast, particularly if you enjoy stories like designer Nilo Rhodis Jamiro convincing George Lucas to push him around to help gain the support of his crew on the Ailing Howard the duck Plam, The door opens, It's George.

Everybody gas. George makes a bee line to me, I'm literally back against the Wall, or here puppeteer Tim Rose's emotional story behind that iconic Admiral Acbar shot in Return of the Jedi. I believe it or something to be proud of, but not to Celburg or how Stars editor Paul Hirsch tackled cutting so many successful films. The thing that I learned from working with the Palmer is that tension depends on a clock. You need to have the sense that time is running out.

Maybe Oscar winning sound designer Mark Mangini's insightful chat about his work on Blade Runner twenty forty nine. Not a single sound from the original Blade Runner in the new film, A great deal of inspiration. That's the film Youmentary's podcast with me Jamie Benning, Hello, Twisted Humans. Do you find yourself wanting to know more about the latest murder, conspiracy, cult or haunting than this is the podcast for you. In nineteen fifty two, there was a record high of UFOs reported fifteen hundred sightings.

There has been evidence of human sacrifice, double worship, and it is haunted by more spirits than can be counted. A family of two adults and two kids reportedly saw a giant flying thing with glowing red eyes. And meanwhile, the family's nanny that helped Veronica to care for her and Lucian's children was found bludgeoned to death in the basement of their family home. I'm Alicia and I'm Sierra and this is twisted and uncorked. Jeez, you started to believe the things they say of you.

You really do believe's talk of God is true? Is he said he more of me? I'd be lost, I'd be fried. I couldn't cook, just couldn't cook. I turned my I'm back away.

I wouldn't want to excuse me. So Minemple should be a half a paid what you have made that I dare be a You know I love you? Did you see Allay? Haven't lead in you in God? So tell me that I'm saying ches.

You know I love you? Did you see ah? Wait? Haven't leading you in God? So tell me that I'm said Christ, You're the great Jesus.

Christ, prove to me that you're divine. Change my water into wine. Jeez alone, anes Us. It's put of the next episode. We're taking the trip back to another Andrew Lloyd Weber thing, but this time it's not cats.

Thank Christ. It's all about Jesus, uh and Judas and all their pals. We're gonna be talking about the film adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar and Uh, Emma's gonna be joining me for that one because I haven't seen the movie. I've only seen the one of the film stage adaptations, so you know, like what they did with cats, so I've only seen that so but I've heard that the movie's good. I've seen the movie kind of out of context some of the scenes, so I'm super excited to get to talk about it.

So until then, you can find Emma and I over weirdingwaymedia dot com, where we do another show together called Scary Stories We Tell, which is a weekly spooky, weird show that has nothing to do with movies for the most part, but movies tend to invade the conversation from time to time, especially if I'm involved. But no Cats, No Cats twenty nineteen. I don't think that'll ever be a thing we cover on that podcast. I think we can safely put it behind us now, right like it's it's it's something that I've covered now, and I can say if anyone ever asks, like, have you covered cats twenty nineteen. I'll be like, yes, I sure have, and I do think if anything, its existence is justified right then and there as something worth talking about.

But I'm not necessarily sure like it in and of itself really offers much other than just like a weird talking piece. Like you know how let like they have those like cards for conversations. It's like it's one of those. It's like Cat's twenty nineteen. What did you think that fucking weird thing?

I think it it served a single purpose, and that purpose would be to show future directors what not to do if adapting cats in the future. Don't do this or to do that, just like, just don't do any of this for any movie ever, right, Anthropomorphized cat humans is not a good idea, regardless of the setting or narrative that you're going for. So Emma, thank you so much for joining me. This is fun. I mean we've been literally talking for like nine hours now, so probaly Moore.

Yeah, but uh yeah, to talk about cats. Yeah, let's talk about cats together. It's uh yeah, it's been fun. But hopefully Jesus Christ Superstar is a little bit better, so uh yeah, yeah. Until until then, we'll catch on the next episode,