How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cats (2019)

I’m having trouble deciding whether this should have spoilers or not – I’m also having trouble deciding if one can even spoil Cats (2019).

In classic Tom Hooper fashion, the cinematography at work here is fundamentally wild.

I wasn’t planning on writing this article. I was rather set on writing a quick response to The Rise of Skywalker, which seemed to me to be more important. But what was supposed to be a focused examination of the character directions in the Sequel Trilogy slowly grew to be some monstrously large dissertation about a disappointing finale. It will probably have to be split into multiple parts, and even then, it’s going to be unruly. So, rather than open the New Year with a piece stuffed full of frustration, I turned my eyes towards my other current obsession. I’ve seen Cats (2019) multiple times now, and I’ve talked about it on my social media, but I feel like people have misunderstood me. It’s time to set the record straight.

The fact that Cats (2019) exists at all is some sort of twisted miracle. In 1939, famed English poet T. S. Elliot published Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a loose collection of fun poems about cats. It’s essentially a bunch of nonsense rhymes and ideas thrown together in an anthology. Andrew Lloyd Webber, however, saw potential in Elliot’s poems. Somehow, the successful composer decided to further string the unconnected poems together and adapt them to the stage. As a result, Weber created Cats, a musical with next to no plot and about the same amount of musicality. It was a smashing success. Cats ran for 21 years, making it the longest-running musical on Broadway. It heavily features ballet and bizarre make-up, creating an experience you really have to see to believe. For the most part, the songs are adapted from Elliot’s verse to create a collection of cats just kind of introducing themselves. There are a few notable exceptions, but most notable is ‘Memory,’ the show-stopper of the musical. Cats has been described as plotless – basically, every year the night of the ‘Jellicle choice’ comes where the Jellicle cats all gather at the Jellicle ball and one Jellicle cat is chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer where they will die and come back in a new life. No one ever really explains what a Jellicle cat is, but a bunch of Jellicle cats introduce themselves and eventually, one of them is chosen. That’s it, that’s the show. Most of the songs aren’t even that amazing? Weber does this weird hypnotic thing where nothing is necessarily memorable, but the choruses and named are repeated an obscene amount of times in order to get them stuck in your head. I can only imagine that the show became so popular through sheer wonder and amazement rather than actual appreciation of the narrative.

Neither of these characters really have any defining characteristics but we'll follow them on this two-hour train to wonderland.

Which brings us to the present day. For some god-forsaken reason, Tom Hooper signed up to direct a live-action adaption of Cats for Universal pictures. Patrick H Willems dissects this better than I ever could, but Tom Hooper is a wildly weird director who frequently makes bold choices without seeming to have any real understanding of the art.[1] Hooper seems to have more or less fumbled his way into success with these weird and wild choices, and now all of a sudden he’s directing Cats (2019). In place of the bizarre make-up of the stage production, Hooper decided to use ‘Digital Fur Technology’ to blend the actors into a sort human/cat hybrids. The result is a weird uncanny valley where nothing looks particularly natural and everything is a little uncomfortable. Pair this with the mildly sexualized ballet of Weber’s production and the inherent weirdness of both the plot and all the creatives involved, and you get… this.

And I kind of love it.

Don’t get me wrong – Cats (2019) is not a good movie by any conventional means. Hooper bafflingly tries to include a semblance of plot via expanding Idris Elba’s character Macavity – who is basically just cat Moriarty. This ‘expansion’ includes a lot of Macavity teleporting around and spouting the most incredible dialogue. Despite being translated into a live-action movie, Cats (2019) still features a heavy amount of ballet, including two segments that are, like, upwards of five to ten minutes of just silent ballet without any real context or cohesiveness? I don’t know if they meant something in the musical – I haven’t seen it. But they don’t seem to mean anything here. The first half features a lot of Rebel Wilson and James Corden doing kind of typical Rebel Wilson and James Corden stuff, and most of it doesn’t really land. Human actors meow and hiss at each other and rub each other’s faces. If you come into this movie seeking to dislike it, there’s a lot there.

Meet Taylor Swift cat.

Yet, I adore this stupid amazing movie. Because everyone in this cast is having an absolute blast and it shows. Ian McKellen plays Gus the Theatre Cat – who’s full name is Asparagus, but everyone calls him just Gus – and there’s nothing quite like seeing Ian McKellen drink out of a bowl of milk and grumpily meow at people. Jason Derulo plays a cat named the Rum Tum Tugger, and he runs around yelling about being indecisive. Idris Elba is on full display (sometimes almost literally) and is absolutely wild in this movie. Taylor Swift plays Bombalurina and drugs the cast with catnip before seductively hyping up Macavity. Oh my gosh, Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. That’s it. Just everything about Skimble. After his number, he twirls into the air and then vanishes into thin air. I’m not going to explain that because the movie really doesn't either.

Pictured, Jason Derulo as Rum Tum Tugger yelling about milk.

At some point this movie just kind of clicks together. Like, the first half goes back and forth. The opening number is a wild song with the central refrain ‘Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats’ repeated without any real followable rhythm. Then they just list a bunch of different cats, like ‘practical cats, dramatical cats / pragmatical cats, fanatical cats’ and so on. It’s amazing and extremely confusing. And then there’s suddenly a spoken word about how cats have three names, which never comes around to being relevant. Before we can process that we cut to Cat!Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots (yes, that’s a singular name) who is training mice and cockroaches to sing and dance but is also eating them? And then she strips off the fursuit that is over top of her fursuit and your brain breaks which is good because you won’t be using it anyways. Then Jason Derulo sings, and then James Corden, and this kind of keeps going until Judi Dench as Old Deuteronomy shows up in a song with the laziest attempts to rhyme that I have ever seen. It’s great.

This character alone redeems this movie.

But then, yeah, it all just kind of falls into place. And you begin to realize that this whole movie is just confidently absurd. Everyone is giving it their all, and the madness begins to make sense. Ian McKellen tries to sing and utterly fails to, while Judi Dench as a cat sort of seductively stares in awe. Meanwhile, Idris Elba just keeps doing his thing. And then Skimbleshanks shows up with a tap dance routine that somehow unifies all the insanity and everything from then on is amazing. There’s a number that practically begs you to sing along, and if you are not tempted to do so then you are a coward. Judi Dench stares into your soul and talks about cats for way too long. Jennifer Hudson ascends into a cat face in the clouds. Laurie Davidson makes trombones levitate and also flies. Idris Elba throws his coat off and looks mildly naked. All of this happens, but I know you won’t believe me. And if you did, you wouldn’t understand until you saw the movie.

Ian McKellen tries his best and gets absolutely nowhere but it's kind of fantastic.

Cats (2019) is total madness but at some point, it becomes endearing madness. I genuinely worry because I feel like people have seen my praise for this movie and dismissed it as irony. As if I enjoy this movie ironically and it’s just a fun thing to hate. I don’t hate this movie. I can’t make it any clearer. Cats (2019) is so unironically fun and enjoyable. The insanity coalesces into something transcendent. I’m mystified by this movie. I’ve never watched anything quite like it, and I never will ever again. Movies like this just don’t get made, because every major movie now is constructed in committee to avoid scaring audiences away. Cats (2019) doesn’t care. It spent 90 million dollars on a fever dream of a movie and I love it. If you don’t watch this movie on the biggest screen possible, you’re genuinely missing out. It’s horrific and terrifying but also amazing and mind-bendingly entertaining.

I honestly don't know what's happening in this sequence, and I'm fine with that.

The most telling part of this movie, for me, was after my second watch. I had dragged some friends to experience this revelatory discovery with me. And after, one of them was talking and said “about halfway through I started to get emotional, and I was like – ‘what the heck is happening? This is Cats!’” Because, yeah. This movie is just hypnotically charming. It should be utterly repulsive but it’s amazing. But on that note, let’s talk about ‘Memory’ again. Because at the heart of the swirling madness of this movie is a scene between Victoria, our protagonist (if she can be called that) and Grizabella, this disgraced glamor cat. Grizabella sings ‘Memory,’ a haunting reflection of her life. This song comes back as the full show-stopper, and both times it’s a surprisingly touching piece. But Victoria replies with ‘Beautiful Ghosts.’ ‘Beautiful Ghosts’ didn’t exist in the original production, it was written by Taylor Swift for this production. And it’s gorgeous? It’s the only song in the whole piece to give Victoria any characterization, and it suddenly frames the whole thing around this picture of isolation and found family. Besides ‘Memory,’ it’s easily the closest thing in the musical to a genuine song with pathos, and it didn’t even exist in the original production. I don’t know how the Broadway show of Cats even functions. But this interchange, this rare moment of seriousness and utter relatability, exists at the core of this movie and somehow grounds the whole thing. The imagery of bitter memories of former greatness existing as these beautiful ghosts inaccessible to those who’ve never had anything is hauntingly gorgeous and something that wouldn’t be out of place in something like Les Misérables. These songs frame everything around this idea of identity and belonging. And yet they exist at the center of this absolute fever dream of a movie. It’s that weird juxtaposition, the pathos within absolute insanity, that gives Cats (2019) it’s heart, I think.

Look at Jennifer Hudson just giving it her all. Go out and appreciate her performance if nothing else.

I don’t love this movie ironically, I love it because it’s so genuine in what it is. The best parts of the movie are when it leans into its absolute insanity, and the worst parts are honestly when it tries to pull back and mock itself. That’s why the stuff with Wilson and Corden feels weirdly out of place, whereas Idris Elba’s perpetual cackling laughter fits perfectly in. And that’s why you sit through Judi Dench staring into your very essence and Mr. Mistoffelees trying over and over to win the day. Because it’s all weirdly genuine and it all works. Cats (2019) is honest in what it is, and after movies like The Rise of Skywalker that fight tooth and nail to be anything but subversive, it’s a breath of fresh air. Seeing my boy Skimbleshanks inexplicably teleport the cast to a railway and later fight off people by tap dancing is a ride, but it’s so joyously pleased with itself that I can’t help but follow along. Cats (2019) is not a movie, it’s something absolutely and wonderfully different. It’s ascended beyond such feeble terms. It’s bafflingly spectacular. Nothing exists that’s quite like it.

This movie is weirdly pretty despite how weird many of the visuals are.

Ultimately, adjectives only approximate the wonder of this acid trip of a movie. Cats (2019) is an experience and one that is arguably fundamental to life as we know it. To understand anything that I’m saying, you may just have to experience it for yourself.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1nQoWnFBSw&t=1255s