CAT'S BREAKFAST

MOVIE
CATS
Francesca Hayward, Judi Dench
Director Tom Hooper
Review Ray Chan

THE movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running musical (based of course on TS Eliot's poetry) has finally made it to the screen, after much-publicised negative reaction to advance trailers.
    Using "digital fur" technology, the film turns its star-studded cast into singing, dancing kitties, a “weirdness” factor that caused most of the early uproar.
    Those of a certain vintage will remember a cartoon called Clutch Cargo, which superimposed live-action human lips over the animation. It caused me nightmares as a child, and watching this new creation had the cold sweats flowing once again.
    But if viewers can somehow overcome this unnatural countenance, they may actually find themselves enjoying the adventures of the tribe of cats called the Jellicles, who gather together for a (fur)ball and celebration.
    The rhythmic nature of Eliot's poems had long been considered excellent material for musicalisation, as the style was reminiscent of that used by popular lyricists. Lloyd Weber had first applied melodies to the words as a pet project back in 1977.
    If you’re not familiar with the story, the felines include the feisty Bombalurina (Taylor Swift), upper-class "fat cat" Bustopher Jones (James Corden), old Gus the theatre cat (Ian McKellen), lazy but agile Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), flashy Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo), and formerly glamorous outsider Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson). Idris Elba adds some spice as the villainous Macavity, while Francesca Hayward plays the abandoned small white kitten Victoria, a newly-created character.
    Many of the Jellicles are vying to be selected by their matriarch, Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), to rise up to the Heaviside Layer, which is essentially what the cats consider heaven. To be considered, they participate in an Idol style competition, an annual ritual which provides the platform for the many song-and-dance routines.
    The most well-loved composition of course is the beautiful Memory, which Hudson screams out throughout the alleys as if she's trying to hack out a hairball, begging to be brought back into the clan and wet-nosing it profusely like a pampered puss in director Tom Hooper's preferred one-take-only style.
    The soundtrack also reminds this reviewer that despite the show’s long-running stage success, the music is not among Lloyd Webber’s best, with many discordant refrains not quite in the same league as the afore-mentioned showstopper.
    The actors generally don’t disappoint, although they have to make do with what they're given. It's hard to keep a serious face when a decorated thespian as McKellen starts to meow and laps at milk. Dame Judi proves she can carry a tune (and indeed had been cast as both Grizabella and Jennyanydots in the initial stage version). Bombalurina gets everyone high on catnip while riding on a glowing half-moon, and Bustopher cavorts through a garbage can and feasts on trash. 
    Wilson, meanwhile, does her acting resume no favours as she remains typecast as a plus-size, goofy, happy-go-lucky character. But she does feature in the movie's most disturbing moments: treating rodents with human faces as her own pets, and choreographing goose-stepping cockroaches, some of whom she actually eats.
    Mind you, the dancers' sensuous movements, throbbing tails and furry cat butts can create curious stirrings in the mind. The male dancers are for all intents and purposes naked, but have been digitally spayed, leaving nothing but flat nether regions. And, in trying too hard to emulate pussy proclivities, the actors gracelessly stick their legs into the air, thankfully not proceeding to rear-end sniffing and worse.
    Some observers believe that a Pixar-like animated version of Cats would have done the musical better justice than this experimental anthropomorphic exercise, yet bizarrely, this live-action interpretation is just so bewilderingly out of the ordinary that it has an allurement of its own.
    Not quite the cat’s meow and far from purr-fect ... but five paws out of ten for its sheer outlandishness.

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