Cats transcript
Season 1 · Episode 4. Generated automatically, so expect the odd misheard word.
Hello and welcome to the Worst Movie Podcast. I'm Ade
And I'm Aaron and this is a podcast where we're going to watch some really bad movies and maybe find something good.
and we're just a couple of amateur podcasters who love to watch movies and love to talk about them. Hope you enjoy this episode.
Okay, today we are going to talk about the movie Cats. All month long, we're talking about modern messes. That's the theme for the month. And so we're covering movies that have come out in the past few years and received a lot of notorious feedback for how bad the movie was. And Cats was certainly a controversial movie. It came out in 2019, directed by Tom Hooper and starring a stellar cast.
Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Dame Judi Dench, James Corden, Jason Derulo, Jennifer Hudson, Sir Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson. It's currently streaming on Netflix. Aaron, why don't you give us a quick synopsis of the movie?
This movie is Victoria, a young white cat is abandoned by her owner in the streets of London in the middle of the night. Witnessing this, a group of alley cats introduce themselves as the Jellicles. Mr. Mistoffelees, Monkustrap, Cassandra, and Demeter take Victoria under their wing and show her the world of the Jellicles as they prepare for the Jellicle Ball, an annual ceremony where cats compete to be chosen to ascend to the heavy side layer and be granted a new life.
in case it's not clear, this movie is based on the famous musical cats that ran on Broadway for 18 years. it's near identical to the Broadway production with the exception of one new song, I believe. And then some small changes to other songs, but largely it's the same as the Broadway production. Is that what you understood?
Yeah, I believe that the role of Victoria was expanded in the don't think that they had songs for that character specifically in the play, but they do in the movie. So I think they expanded on that role.
Yeah.
She sings a song that was written by Taylor Swift for, for the movie. so the movie came out, like I said, in 2019 currently sits at 19 % on rotten tomatoes on letterbox. It has a 1.3 average, which is lower than Madam Web that we covered last time. it earned 75 million in the box office.
Indeed.
for a net loss of about 113 million. So lost a lot of money. What's your relationship to Cats, the musical or the IP? Did you ever see this performed on Broadway or off Broadway?
Ouch.
I saw the video, the VHS, that came out of the live Broadway play in the 90s. I watched it for like a music class. I don't remember it. I remember it being weird, but I wasn't into cats as a...
Okay.
12, 13 year old boy. So yeah, was, was not into it at that time.
Yeah.
Is there a name for people who are really into the musical cats, cat heads? Cat ladies? So you weren't a cat lady.
I don't know, maybe there should be, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I
don't think I may have seen clips of it before, but before I watched this movie for this podcast, I don't think I'd ever seen the production. was familiar with cats ⁓ and have seen pictures of the production, but I knew nothing about it really going into this.
Yeah.
Are you into musicals as a genre?
That's a good question. I am not really in the musicals. I would say I probably skew below average in terms of enjoying musicals. I've seen, I saw Crazy for You on Broadway, loved it. I loved Hamilton. I loved Book of Mormon. So I've seen, there's several musicals that I've seen that I absolutely loved, but I would say most of the musicals I saw
Yeah.
just didn't really get into it. I'm not into quote unquote stereotypical Broadway musical music. ⁓ What about you?
Yeah.
I think I'm more of an enjoyer than that. ⁓ Not by much. So I there are musicals that I liked. I like Rent, Producers, Hamilton. I even like the old like Elvis musical movies. So I like music and I like theater and movies, but it's not like a ⁓ primary genre for me. So there's a lot of staples in that genre that I haven't seen, but I do enjoy them generally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm certainly not an aficionado. I'm not a hater either, but I will say I do get turned off by the stereotype of people just breaking into song to describe the plot of a movie. And so, ⁓ yeah. Well, yeah, I, I mean, I will admit I was kind of dreading watching this movie. I felt like this would not be for me.
Yeah.
You
You're not gonna like musicals that much then, probably.
because it didn't really appeal to me in terms of its marketing. And I think even the musicals I mentioned that I liked, I feel like a strong comedic hook or music that more aligned with the genre that I'm into probably is what pulled me into those musicals more so than your typical Broadway production.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Okay, so this should be an interesting discussion. Before we jump into the movie, I always give a spoiler alert and we're going to spoil what happens in this movie. I will say the musical is over 40 years old. So I think by now we probably don't need to send a spoiler alert. And ⁓ also it really isn't a very plot driven movie. Not a lot happens.
Right.
But in any regard, spoiler alert. So we start off, as you said, in the synopsis, a cat is dropped off in the streets of London and we break into the first song, Jellicle Cats. Usually I'll ask you to describe what happens during the scene. Not much happens, but maybe you can kind of set the stage of what we're witnessing and yeah, what the...
What is a Jelco cat, Aaron?
I couldn't tell you. I guess they're street cats in London. They're not all street cats though, right? There's some that live in homes, but I think it's maybe a type of character in a cat, possibly.
I
you're asking back a question that I don't know the answer to.
Yeah, so this first part of the movie is really just introduction to all of the players. We get to see all the different types of cats and their personalities and they're all meeting Victoria, this abandoned cat for the first time in the streets. And ⁓ there's lots of different types of cats. There's like the cat burglars and the...
The fat cats and the lazy ones and the like magical Sneaky ones there's all sorts of different cats, but yeah, I don't know I couldn't tell you what a gelacle cat honestly is It's just a it's a London cat I guess
Yeah, my first note really big was WTF is a Jellicle Cat. They break into the song and they say the word Jellicle so many times that I'm like, is this a word that I should know? Should I be familiar with what a Jellicle Cat is?
The way that I took it was, a Jellicle Cat displays certain types of personality traits.
Okay. Yeah. And like you said, the first, so 15 minutes into this, I was like, I do not know if I can watch the rest of this movie because it's just them singing about what Jellicle cats are. And then the first four songs, if I'm not mistaken, are just different cats telling you who they are. And
Yeah.
It doesn't matter because none of those cats have any real bearing later on in the story. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Why, why do we spend 20 minutes getting to know the personal lives of these cats only for them to disappear?
Yeah, I wouldn't say you're wrong about that. ⁓
Okay.
should we talk about like what the meaning of this play is up at the top?
Maybe, I don't know that'll help me. I'm sure there are listeners here who love the musical cats. I mean, it's probably the wrong way to think about this. It's not to really analyze any particular lyrics or plot points. I mean, we can talk about what the musical means, but yeah, since you brought it up, why don't you tell me what this means?
Yeah, I think we're going to make a lot of people upset with this podcast.
So I think that there's two competing camps or thoughts with this play and the movie where it's based on poems that just seem to be funny poems about cats that T.S. Eliot knows in his life or sees in the streets of London or whatever it is. it just seems to be based on funny poems about cats and their imaginary lives. But within the
play itself there are some themes that were written into it that are kind of along the lines of redemption or acceptance, community, remembrance, things like that that is written into it but I don't know that it's about I wouldn't say it's about those things I think it really is just a play about cats and so a lot of the sub substance of this play
is just singing about cats doing funny things and like what they must get up to in the middle of the night when they're out running the streets of London.
Yeah.
Yeah. And for what it's worth, I appreciate that interpretation more than I do the interpretation about some lofty meeting around life and death, because ultimately it's not that, it's not that deep in terms of what it says about those things. So yeah, I could see, I could see a world where I enjoy watching a fat cat roll around the stage and sing about how she's fat and lazy and, ⁓
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, that could be funny. think, okay, so I'm dancing around. It's going to be clear coming out this time what each of us think about this movie, I think, but I'm trying not to tip my hat too much towards the conclusion. But maybe we should talk a little bit about the most divisive thing about the movie and that's the digital fur. So in the
Broadway production, obviously, they're very elaborate costumes. All the characters are dressed up in cat costumes, essentially, with additional flourishes. In the movie, they decide to, I guess, use motion capture and add digital fur to all the actors.
What did you think about that choice?
I understand what they were going for.
But I think that they were failed by the technology. I see the vision that they had, but it wasn't executed well. was surreal. And honestly, I thought that the animated nature of it, because it does at times look straight animated CG, like everything appears animated on screen.
that it takes away from the spectacle of it. Because I was watching it imagining these things happening on a stage in a play. And I'm like, if this were really happening on stage, the dancing and the running around and singing, that would all be really impressive. But it just appears animated and it kind of loses the grandeur of a live stage performance, I think, because it looks fake.
a more realistic quality to it. think it could have worked better than it did, but it didn't work at all, I think.
100%. Yeah, for me, since I hadn't seen the Broadway production, I wasn't in a position where I could compare to what it would have been if it was on stage. I could imagine it, but you're right. It was very animated in how it presented to me as a viewer. wasn't just like there were a flourishes added.
Mm-hmm.
in post-production, it was basically like you were watching a cartoon with some quasi-realistic faces slapped onto these cartoon bodies. And it took me completely out of enjoying any of the physicality of the performances. There are long portions of the movie where
Yeah.
the characters are dancing and I assume doing things that would be impressive acrobatically if I was watching that on the on stage. But I was just kind of scratching my head wondering how much of this is actually real in that they actually made those like leaps and dance moves and so on and so forth or how much of that is just drawn and computer generated because of the ladder it's like
Yeah.
Why would I enjoy this five minute sequence of cartoons dancing? It's not impressive at all.
Yeah, I will say that I thought that the ballet scenes with the Victoria character was good. I liked the ballet and I thought it was fitting, like cats are kind of graceful and I thought I just kind of liked the ballet, but that was not a heavy CG.
type scene. There were other scenes where, like you said, they're like jumping off walls and that all would have been way more impressive to see unanimated essentially, but I did like the ballet dance scenes.
Even the ballet for me, because so much of it was ambiguous in terms of how this was created, I felt like it felt short for me. I was just like, is this, how much of this is real? the whole thing is about watching the people move and being impressed with
their grace and their the power and just the physicality of it. And all that was lost because it's essentially this like grainy CG body that you're looking at.
Yeah,
maybe I'm taking it on faith then that it was actually performed because it's not like this big grand, you she's not doing ballet off the walls or off the roof. It's pretty grounded dance form. like, yeah, maybe I'm taking it on faith that it was all actually performed. I guess I really don't know, but I assume it was.
Right.
The other thing about it for me was that my understanding of why the musical was so popular when it was and why blew up was the costuming was pretty impressive and grand and that completely goes away when they're digital cats and
I don't know, there's just something about the realism of being able to see people on stage in costume that is why it's so much more impressive. It was almost like the decision to digitize the bodies took away everything that made an impressive musical.
I agree. I think that the decision to go with all digital cat for ruined the movie. I would go that far.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I, I think if you're somebody who came in having seen the musical production and loved it, you could have filled in the blanks in your own mind. But as somebody who's just fresh to the experience of cats, I was just like, what is this? And it's not, it's also not the most accessible musical given how it starts.
The Jellicle Cat song is not a great song, don't think. I would imagine it's not in the top three most played from the soundtrack. around, talking about being Jellicles, I was just like, what am I watching and why am I watching this?
One of the things that I've heard said about this movie is that it's more about mood and spectacle than plot, and I think that that is true in terms of the lyrics. Like the music is fun. I like I liked the music. The lyrics aren't deep, generally speaking.
With exceptions.
Yeah, we can get into the music as we walk throughout the movie. Would you say in the first few Which did you like the most?
It's a good question. think that I expected, none of them stood out to me, to be honest. But I think that I was pleasantly surprised by James Corden's song. I think that I expected to not like him in the role. I'm not generally a James Corden fan in other things. So I was not expecting to like him in this. But I thought he did fine for not really
like a stage actor or a singer that I know of. I think he did fine. I was not into the Rebel Wilson, the kitchen scene. Yeah, I didn't care for that song that much. I thought it was kind of creepy and weird.
Gumby cat.
Yeah.
about you.
Yeah, in this first part, yeah, so we go through Rebel Wilson, Lazy Cat, Jason Derulo, Sexy Cat, I guess, was his claim to fame. Yes.
Is that Rum Tum Tugger? Yeah,
I don't know. I think it's supposed to be a sexy hip hop cat or something.
Yeah. And then, James Corden, Bustopher Jones, he's the fat cat. And then we see, Mungo Jerry and, Rumpel teaser, Rumpel taser. Cat burglars. Yeah. And those four, would say none will be on my repeat. ⁓
Which are like cat burglars, they're... Yeah.
in a playlist. I'm not adding any of those to my Spotify playlist.
Yes, I think we also meet Grizabella in this section here.
We do briefly. She doesn't have a full solo, but we see her creeping through the streets. ⁓
She's like
an old grizzled cat that had former days of glory but has kind of moved past those and is now seen as kind of an outsider.
Yeah. So we're five songs in, including the intro, Jellicle Cats, and I'm just like zero, zero for five for me on the music. Can we talk briefly about the sets as well? Because I think this is another thing that I would appreciate a lot more in a live production or even a recording of a live production more so than I would in the movie. They...
play around with scale in a way that I don't think works very well. Like sometimes the cats are really small compared to their environment. Sometimes they're not. And I just felt like again, puzzled by some of these choices in terms of how they put the settings together.
I think that I disagree with you on the sets and the scale. I liked the sets. I thought that the sets were one of the highlights of the movie and I liked the way that they use scale. To me, the scale changes, like you said, which I don't think is necessarily a negative thing. And it also could be intentional because, you know, to you and me,
In our daily lives, the scale of things makes sense. But if you're looking at us from space, our scale is completely different. So I think that like. You know their size does change relative to their surroundings, but that could just be we're seeing them from a different perspective at different times of the movie. There's you know, there's some scenes that are overhead and they're looking down and the cats look really tiny like running around in the street. And then there are other scenes when it's down on their level. That it seems.
you know, the scale makes more sense almost to like a human level where like it almost seems like they're human sized cats. But then there are times that where it pulls out and you see that all of this is happening on a much smaller scale than we're than we're used to as humans. So I thought that the scale kind of worked and I liked a lot of the scenes. I didn't like the the
Rebel Wilson song, but I did like the scale of the kitchen set where they're kind of running along the counters and under the table. And I liked that part of it, to be honest.
Yeah, I guess I just felt like it changed too much for my liking in terms of, and it wasn't just that it changed from perspective to perspective. It was that it felt like from set to set, wasn't consistent about, these, are these human sized cats or are these cat size humans as cats?
Yeah, I think it kind of gave me like Honey I Shrunk the Kids vibes at times and I like that movie so it reminded me of that.
⁓ yeah.
They didn't talk about being gelicles in that movie though. Not apples to apples.
Yeah,
just mean like scale of sets and things I kind of like that I like when they play with scale I You don't see that often in movies and so I thought it it was kind of novel and fun I had very low expectations. So the the inconsistency didn't bother me that much
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Yeah. So moving forward, we get to old Deuteronomy and this kind of sets up the second act of the movie where we see Dame Judy Dench as old Deuteronomy. And why don't you, I guess, summarize what she means and what happens in this section of the movie.
Yeah, she's like the matriarch of the of the Jellicle family. I think they said that she mothered most of the cats that are part of the Jellicle cat crew. But she's getting old and everybody kind of knows that she's kind of hit the end of her time. she's the matriarch of the
group and she chooses the cat to go to the heavy side layer at the Jellicle ball that they hold. is the heavy side layer is where a cat goes at the basically to end their life and be reborn in a new life with I think I believe there's their memories and things like that too. Like they can, they just continue living but in a new life.
So it's like reincarnation in a way.
it took me a while to really understand fully the arc of what they were talking about. Essentially the whole movie, they each want to be picked to get killed so that they get reincarnated. Right? I mean, that's what it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, they want to be picked to end their street life and start a new life and hope that it's better than the one that they're in.
which
it was a little incongruous for me because it seemed like some of the cats seemed to really enjoy their lives, but they wanted to be picked at the Jellicle Mall. And so I, I didn't really understand what was happening and also
mean, you can
enjoy your life and still want something better.
I guess so. And not to bring too many of my own religious biases here, but I was kind of like, that's bullshit, right? Like is old Deuteronomy just killing these cats? Like, is this a cult or what is, what is happening here? It sounds like a cult. We're all Jellicles and the cult leader is going to pick one of us to get reincarnated. Exactly. I mean,
You
Pass around the Kool-Aid
It was hard for me to get invested in the story because of that perspective that I think my, biases brought to it.
Yeah, it is kind of an unconventional hierarchy and system they've got in this Jellicle cult.
Yeah, so I wasn't rooting for any of them to get picked. was like, no, you don't, don't listen to Judy Dutch.
You
That's a fair perspective, yeah.
By the way, I especially felt like when I saw Judi Dench on screen, I was like, why did they do this to her? like just seeing digital, like half digital, Judi Dench just made me sad. I don't know. That was, that pained me more than any other character.
I completely disagree. ⁓
hahahaha
I wasn't that I enjoyed suffering. I thought that it was fun to see Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen having fun with roles that are way outside of their normal, what you expect from them. I thought that they were having fun with it, to be honest.
She did not look like she was having fun. She looked like she was going to cry the whole time. Now, the character was sad.
Yeah, I think that she was, I thought she was just playing the character well.
I felt like she was playing the character well, but also channeling her sadness at being in this movie and being dressed in this digital lion costume that looked out of proportion. Like you saw, like her legs looked weird in it. I don't know. It looked very unnatural and weird to me.
She didn't have to be.
she wouldn't know during production that they're gonna... Biff it on the costuming in post.
She is wise behind her years. So maybe she saw the signs of where this was going. Exactly. It was too late. She already received her check so she couldn't back out of it.
But she still signed the contract to be in it
Nah, I thought that it was fun to see kind of these established older actors having fun with like a silly role. I don't think they thought this was gonna win an Oscar. They just wanted to be in Cats.
Yeah.
We can probably skip ahead to McCavity. Do you want to talk about that character and?
Yeah, I'm kind of hazy on Macavity. It was played by Idris Elba. He's kind of the antagonist of the story. dark magic or something that he can do. I didn't understand really what he was doing. I thought he was killing the characters that had been... So there are a number of cats that are kind of...
candidates to be selected for the the heavy side layer and He was among them, but there were other candidates Rebel Wilson's character and
everybody that had a solo ⁓ were essentially auditioning for old Deuteronomy to get picked.
Yeah, at the beginning.
Yeah, and so his plan as the antagonist is to essentially kidnap all of the other candidates to be chosen and take them and keep them chained up on a steamship or something in the River Thames. But he would he would just disappear with them and it wasn't really explained where they were going. I thought he was. Yeah, I thought he was killing them or something, but yeah, he he was just kidnapping them.
some barge.
and his plan was to be the only remaining candidate so that he must be selected for the Heavy Side layer.
which is a plot that a fifth grader probably would put together of, let me kidnap everybody in the talent show and I'll be the one left for you to pick.
They'll have to choose me.
But this again, I was confused because Macavity seemed very powerful. He was able to disappear at will and he also wanted old Deuteronomy to kill him so he could go to heaven and reincarnate. But why? Like he's already the most powerful cat in the Jellicle world. Why does he want this?
Yeah.
I don't know. I don't understand his motivations at all. They all seem to wanna die.
I mean.
Yeah, again, I know that it's probably unfair to analyze the plot too much. Like this isn't about, this isn't a movie you watch for the plot. You're watching it for the musical numbers and the performances, but it was a little confusing to me.
How did you... So this section is where Taylor Swift is introduced. She just has a kind of a single song and then she's in the background of some other scenes. But how did you like her song?
She's a,
she's a henchman for McCavity. I thought she did well. thought her song was pretty good. So this'll, we can, we can talk a little bit more about, about the music. I felt like the second half of songs were a lot better than the first half. Again, the first half just turned me off because they were all like, here's me. I'm the fat cat. Here's me. I'm a lazy cat. And I, exactly. A lot of exposition.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sex position.
There was some of that in the second half. really, you know, we find skimble shanks, the railway cat, and he talks about being a railway cat. was like, okay. my gosh. I was like, I'm definitely not banging this in the car, driving down the highway, listening to skimble shanks.
I like skimbleshanks.
I mean, if you like that song, that's fine.
If you're so insecure that you can't play cats in your car, that's a choice.
I mean, I'm not going to yuck your yum, but, ⁓
skimble shanks is not my jam. But all that I was going to say is we get, the real banger of the movie, which is memory. And probably the most famous song from this production before watching this, I'd heard the song before, but I couldn't have told you this is what it was from. when, ⁓ grizzabella,
Yeah.
starts singing memory, I'm like, okay, I recognize this. And, ⁓ we actually get two renditions of memory. She does kind of a short, you know, short edit and then the full extended cut where she really bangs it out. And I was like, damn, this is, this is awesome.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I loved memory and then the song that was added for Victoria, Beautiful Ghosts, I think.
Yeah, Beautiful Ghost, that was the one that Taylor Swift wrote. That was, yep, that was my second favorite.
Yeah, incredible. I loved it.
Yeah, I was like, like heartbroken at the lyrics. It was so good. The memory is basically a song about remembering back on your past glory and that it's all gone now kind of, but it lives on in your memories. then Victoria's song, Back to Her, was like, at least you had the good times.
Like, yeah, you have these beautiful ghosts in your past that you can at least still look back on. And she never had that. She just wanted to be lucky enough to have the good experience. I thought that was like so emotional and really well done. the performance, Jennifer Hudson is incredible. I think in, anything, but, the actress who played Victoria, Francesca Hayward, that was, this was her first.
⁓ singing experience as far as I know and she did really good
Yeah, it seems like her background was as a ballerina.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm sure she's acted before, but I'm not positive on that and. In movies and things, I know she does the ballerina stuff, but yeah, for for what seemed like a relative newcomer, her performance was really good.
Yeah, those were by far my two favorite songs. and then the one that Taylor Swift sang, my third favorite. She's just obviously a great performer.
Yeah.
I had some issues with Taylor Swift's performance though. I did not like the British accent. I thought that it came and went and was a little like hit or miss. And I thought it would have just been better if she sang it in her natural singing voice instead of trying to affect this British accent. And, and I also thought that Idris Elba
yeah.
Sure.
He's not a great singer. He was good. He was fine. But like I for the Taylor Swift big number, I kind of expected to like it more than I did.
Yeah. I think for me, not just the performances of Memory and Beautiful Ghosts, but to what you said in terms of the meaning behind those songs, they seemed just a lot deeper and more meaningful than all the other songs of, I'm a lazy cat. Hey, I'm a cat that lives on a train. I just, I don't know. my songs.
Yeah.
If they had written a whole play around that premise of those two songs, Beautiful Ghosts and Memory, you would have an incredible play. And I don't have an issue with them kind shoehorning it into this otherwise silly, fantastic play, but it does seem like those two songs are certainly outliers and
yeah.
in terms of like their overall impact.
Again, we get memory twice. That's how they not only is it a banger, but they know it's a banger. They're like, how can we do this twice? Yeah, exactly. From 15 minutes ago, we're going to do it again and for longer. so. Yeah, but it comes more than halfway through the movie. I like if you were going to write cats from scratch, just start with that. And then I would stay in my chair waiting for another.
Yeah, they know. Do you remember this one from earlier?
Yeah, yeah, it's still good the second time though.
Yeah.
Yeah.
song like that.
Yeah.
So because it's such a great song, old Deuteronomy picks her to die and gets sent up to the heavy side heaven.
Yes, and a more deserving candidate. Maybe there isn't one. I can't think of one.
Well, certainly not in that production of Jellicle.
Yeah, maybe there was a cat that we didn't get introduced to that was more deserving. We didn't meet all the cats.
auditions that we heard.
Yeah, maybe they, maybe one of them will sing Memory next year and get picked. They just need to...
You
It just
becomes like an old classic in the Jellicle world that everybody gives it a go every year to try to get picked.
Whoever can belt out the solo best gets to die.
So that takes us to the end of the movie basically. What other notes did you have?
I love Ian McKellen, but I thought that he struggled singing his song about, he was like this old stage cat. Old Gus, I think was his name. Gus the theater cat. He's like this old cat that's been around forever and seen everything, and he's kind of the stage cat. Like he's this old theater cat, and he's singing about his...
Gus, yeah.
past glory and stuff. I thought the song and the lyrics were up there in terms of like, this has emotional impact and meaning, but I thought he struggled with the singing and I don't hold that against him by any means. But yeah, was kind of sad to see him struggle to sing, but maybe it's fitting for his character.
Maybe I didn't have a note on, there was a scene where he had been captured by McHavity and transported to that barge on the Thames and McHavity has a henchman growl tiger and Gus and James Corden and Rebel Wilson all fight the henchman.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And it's just a very weird fight scene. And my note was, was this supposed to be funny? Where Gus just growls at the henchmen and henchmen falls overboard. It was weird.
Yeah.
He chases him out on the catwalk, right? And he ends up falling off the end after he growls at him.
Yeah, it was a weird sequence for me.
Yeah, it didn't work that well.
I thought that this and maybe maybe I'm being optimistic, but I thought that this would be a fun movie to work on. Demanding for sure, but like I it must have felt like working on a stage performance to some degree. And I don't know. I think that it was probably kind of a fun. Project, but the result was. Failed by the CG, I think.
I had a lot of small notes like, why do some cats have shoes?
I noticed that. a... The one that was break dancing had shoes and I'm thinking that was just a choice for the dancing. I also noticed that there were other cats that, you know, when they would lay down or like move, you could see that they CG'd shoes off their feet or they had like socks or something on like some sort of grippy thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
⁓ And you could tell it was not consistent CG that like in certain angles or movements you could see them like CGing out these socks or slippers or whatever and putting human feet back in which was weird. The feet weren't consistent.
No, I saw some note that in the first cut of the movie, they had left in Judi Dench's watch and human hand and had to fix that later and give her a paw.
That's funny.
So maybe some of the shoes and the feet stuff were just mistakes in the edit.
They needed another year to finish the post-processing on this movie.
Yeah, some of the green screen stuff too, I didn't like it all. Or it was really just a question of was it green screen? So the Skimbleshanks railway cat sequence, I made a note there. I can't remember what shot it was now, but it just looked like really cheap 1980s green screen. And maybe that's one of those spots where when they decided to do that, it...
Yeah.
really skewed with the aspect ratio of the scale. And it was maybe me noticing things like that that bugged me.
Yeah, that could be. It was visually inconsistent.
one point I wrote, wish I did drugs. I think if I was high, this movie would have been a lot more enjoyable.
⁓ yeah i think that you are not wrong about that at all
It was very, it would be very trippy if you're already tripping.
Yeah, it would be a lot of fun. I think if you're in the right mood for it, like if you're there for the vibes, it is fun. It's a fun movie. It's a lot of spectacle. Well, no, let me rephrase that. The play is a lot of spectacle and fun. The movie is not much fun or spectacly.
Yeah, and again, that
This is probably another instance where watching this, the Broadway production with an audience, with a crowd, with people that you enjoy being around might make it a lot more fun. Watching this as a movie alone in your basement is probably not the right way to enjoy cats.
Right.
So let me ask you this, how do you think about in general watching recorded performances versus live performances? Like whether it's a concert or a play or musical, how often does that work for you watching recordings?
I think that it generally works for me. So like a couple examples, I've seen Rent, I've seen the producers, both the movie and the live performance. And I love both. I think that the movie...
Performance has to be a better, like tighter package though than the stage. think that like there's a little bit more margin of error with stage because it's a live performance that like you can have some small imperfections. But I think when you do a movie on what is essentially a franchise, or it's not really a franchise, but a ⁓ beloved
topic or beloved play, it needs to be better than this was to keep the core people that are going to go see it because it's cats. Like, I think that most people that go to see this already were into cats, the play, and it doesn't live up to that spectacle wise, I think. In this instance,
I think that other instances like the producers and rent that I've seen work really well, both in movie and in play form.
we've already sort of touched on this earlier in the discussion, but what's your overall verdict for cats? movie.
I liked it. I had a good time. I had so much fun. Yeah, I thought that the different cats and their personalities were kind of cute. You didn't like them, the Jellicle stuff at the beginning, but I'm, I was watching it and I'm just trying to imagine like T.S. Elliot writing a funny thing down in his notepad about this cat that just walked by that like, that's, you know, a fancy.
Ha
lazy cat or you know, like I thought it was just kind of cute and funny to imagine somebody taking the time to write all of this about just cats that they know. like the sets in this the scale. I know you didn't, but I thought the songs were fine. They're light hearted. The like the music. There's nothing wrong with the music. The context of the content of the lyrics was kind of.
Lame, but the music was good. Uh, the LA was good. I thought Francesca Hayward did a really good job. Beautiful ghosts. The song was incredible. Memory was incredible. Um, and so like, you know, whether, um, whether you think that this is just a movie or a story about funny cats, or you think there's some deeper message there, I think that both can be true.
And so you can get both of that those things out of it if that's what you go in looking for If you go in expecting it to be a Story, you're mostly gonna be disappointed, but it is there And I thought that it was nice to see you know, Dame Judy and Sir Ian having fun Which I thought they were having fun. I don't know if they were but I I liked it. I like I I went in for the
the experience and the vibes and I knew it was probably weak on story going in so I just went in expecting very little and had a pretty good time. would watch it again.
Okay. So how, how would you rate it on a out of five stars? you giving it five stars?
geez no two. we talking about in terms of bad movies or are we talking about all movies overall? Because yeah two.
No, movies overall, it sounds like you enjoyed
it. Okay. I mean, I wasn't expecting that. I mean, you just got done talking about how much you loved the movie and then you give it two out of five stars.
Hahaha
I know. Well,
so here's the thing. The visual experience of this movie is completely ruined, I think. ⁓ The performances are really good. Like, I know that those were real people singing and dancing and that they can actually do all those things because they did it for decades on Broadway. So I know that like this, the performance is fine. ⁓ It's the visuals of the weird cat fur and
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, like for you, seems like the sets and the scaling, like the visual effects of this movie completely failed the substance that is there. And there's not a ton of substance there to begin with.
So would you change your rating if you didn't know who these actors were and you didn't know that this was, you didn't know anything about the Broadway production and the history of the Broadway production. If you were just like, this is, if I had shown this to you and I said, this is our local community college, put this on, it was written by a student there this year. Would that change your rating?
⁓ no, because I think that, I mean, I'd believe you that it was a college level effort on the visuals, but if, if Jennifer Hudson is singing memory at your community theater, then, sign me up because like, thought that, you know, there's nothing, nothing really wrong with the performance. The story is what it is. It's, it's a lighthearted musical. wasn't expecting, you know, I'm, like old Elvis.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Movies which is the story is meaningless and 90 % of those so that's not a problem for me
Yeah.
Yeah, mean, I, yeah, for my part, like I said earlier, I know it's unfair to judge it on the story or even the lyrical content. don't think, I think I'm trying to come at it with a, an open mind in terms of rating the movie based on what type of movie it is.
I even enjoy watching some Bollywood movies. I watched a lot of those when I was a kid, growing up and even not even understanding the language and just enjoying the singing and the spectacle. Like I can, I can enjoy performances for what they are. But yeah, for me, this is a one-star movie. I was in near physical pain towards the, in the first half of the movie.
Yeah.
I paused it several times and looked at its two and a half hour runtime. Was that how long it was? was, it was two hours or so. I, felt, felt very long. Yeah. Like I said, memory was a banger. I loved that song. I loved the performance that came way too late in the movie. The rest of it, ⁓ for the most part I could, ⁓ I could take her leaves, gimbal shanks and the rest of the crew.
was long.
That's fair.
So we like to wrap up the podcasts by giving our alternate picks. It sounds like you, you liked this well enough, but what alternate picks would you have for either similar genre or theme or some of the actors, director? are your alternate picks?
My pick for this movie is Tick Tick Boom. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's really good. It's the directorial debut for Lin-Manuel Miranda. It has Andrew Garfield. Andrew Garfield plays Jonathan Larson, who wrote all of the Broadway play Rent. And this is kind of the insight into his kind of creative process during that time.
I have not watched it.
And I love rent. It's like a meaningful play for me and I've listened to it since I was a teenager and like Getting this look into kind of the man behind it Was really good and Andrew Garfield is incredible in it and it was if you like musical theater you'll like tick tick boom and it's it's got all the like heart and emotion that this lacks
Nice. I kind of had fun with my alternate picks. I have two. One is when I was searching Netflix for cats, it also recommended the 2019 documentary from the same year, 2019 documentary, Don't Fuck with Cats. Did you watch that? I was reminded of that. It was a very, very gripping documentary about a group of people on the internet.
Yeah, yeah, I like that.
who saw a video of somebody killing two kittens and then it unraveled a really dark story from there. And I really enjoyed that documentary.
Internet justice.
Yes. And then my second pick is BoJack Horseman. Did you ever watch that?
I haven't watched a ton of it. I have friends that are really into it though.
BoJack Horseman has a lot of references to the musical Cats because one of the main characters, Princess Carolyn, is a cat and she actually has Jellicle Cats, the song, as her ringtone at certain points. And I'm realizing now after watching Cats that there are all sorts of references in BoJack Horseman that I probably didn't understand because I didn't know that they were from the musical Cats. So now I want to rewatch that.
didn't know that.
But
yeah, so those are my two alternate picks. I cheated a little bit because they clearly don't have anything to do or much to do. Yeah, let's just leave it as those two picks. Like I said, I'm not a musical person, so maybe I'm not the right person to be recommending musicals.
Not even another musical.
Okay.
Fair enough.
By the way, before we end this, can I ask how much of your love of cats is because you're assumed to be cat dad or want to be cat dad?
⁓ I would say 30%. I was thinking about it during the while I was watching. I was like, this guy was looking at all these cats that are slinking around. Like I can imagine those kinds of cats.
So you're in the pre-honeymoon phase of cat ownership. so that endeared you to all the jellicles. So we have four cats in our house right now. So maybe I'm a little cynical about cats. Yeah, exactly. That's why, that's why I don't need to hear about any more cats.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You're catted out.
Yeah, fair.
All well, I think that's all we can say about cats for today. I'm Ade
And I'm Aaron, thanks for listening.