The goal of /r/Movies is to provide an inclusive place for discussions and news about films with major releases. Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just to entertain readers. Read our extensive list of rules for more information on other types of posts like fan-art and self-promotion, or message the moderators if you have any questions.
Discussion
So I finally got around to watching Cats. Based on all the bad press surrounding the movie and the horrible reviews, I went into it expecting a complete trainwreck. All I had seen before were YouTube clips of the Rebel Wilson cat eating a cockroach, Jason DeRulo shouting milk, and other things like that.
So I watched it and... I thought it was a pretty good musical. I honestly don’t understand all the hate. There were some silly parts of course, but there were a tiny portion of the movie. The most glaring weakness was the CGI, which was indeed pretty bad, and at times distracting. I think if it was the exact same movie but with the actors wearing the suits from the stage play, the word of mouth would be completely different.
There were many things I liked about it. All the performances were very good, with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench standing out. Even Rebel Wilson and James Corden, who were essentially the comic relief characters, were a little annoying but otherwise OK. There were also some genuinely great and emotional sequences, like Memory and Gus the Theatre Cat. I loved the set design and lighting, which created a nice dark but colorful atmosphere, really fitting for the tone that the movie was going for.
I like musicals in general, so I might be a little biased. But I genuinely didn’t think it was a bad movie. What am I missing?
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
If I had to choose between 'Cats' and 'Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie' I'm getting my sticker collection out and watching GPK.
Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie is the worst film of the 80s.
That's all I've got to say.
LMFAOO
But... Why? Indeed GPK was atrocious, no argument there. But I honestly don’t understand why Cats got such a terrible reputation.
It just didn't feel good to watch it. It's uncomfortable and not in a good way like 'Uncut Gems.' The perspective, the CGI, the facial expressions and the acting all grossed me out. Felt like an awkward advertisement I couldn't skip.
I saw Cats on Broadway twice growing up. It was fantastic. The movie? Not at all.
Fair enough. These things really didn’t bother me, except for the bad CGI. What can I say, I had fun. I can see myself watching it again sometime in the future.
I'm glad you had fun! That's the best part.
You can say it, go on: the girl cats were hot. That was intentional.
Really bad but never crossed the line to so bad that it is good.
I demand the butthole cut. Without that, the movie is nothing.
I think the biggest thing working against Cats the movie is Cats the musical. I guarantee anyone not familiar with musical theatre who hated the movie, would hate the stage musical just as much. It’s just not the kind of thing that gains mass appeal. It doesn’t have a solid plot, a three act story, a clear protagonist/antagonist etc.
They tried to shoehorn in some of these things with the Musical, but it still came off as a fragmented set of disjointed musical numbers.
I personally found the Cats Movie enjoyable on a basic level, just as much as i enjoy the Broadway musical.
This is how I feel about the stage show. I watched the 1998 filmed stage version in preparation to see this and all my life I’d heard how lame and weird Cats is, but I didn’t find it bad at all. It was certainly off-putting but it also felt avant grade because of that. I enjoyed it.
Everything about this adaptation on the other hand feels either misguided at best or calculated at worst. It’s fun but for all the wrong reasons. I laugh at it, not with it.
Yeah, the material is definitely much more suited to the stage play format, it doesn’t translate very well to film.
I think one of the reasons the play worked better was the worldbuilding, with all its magical and fantastical elements. In a movie, you typically want to give your worldbuilding gradually as your characters encounter it through the narrative. In a stage play, the singing and dancing is the central part of the experience, so this is the vessel that you use to give your worldbuilding to the audience. The play manages to make it immersive, mostly thanks to the format of the medium.
I mean, It's an award winning musical, so of course that part is going to be good. It's the execution of the effects that most people didn't like.
But it's ok to like a movie others didn't, And it's ok for others to dislike a movie that you like.
That people exist who think cats is pretty good is equally funny and frightening to me.
I’m extremely late but I have to chime in.
I fucking LOVE Cats. I have been watching the ‘98 stage production for as long as I can remember. I know every song and it was a huge part of my childhood (I’m not even really a theater person. Just a Cats person). I didn’t realize until age ~26 that Cats is a weird show. Literally never occurred to me until the movie came out.
I went to see the movie on my birthday. I expected to not like it as much, but I was excited to see it and sing along. It was so bad that I left 30 min later.
Tom hooper fucked up everything that makes that show enjoyable for me. Plot (or lack thereof) aside, I love Cats becuase of the incredible choreography & music. Seeing the things these people can do with their bodies while also singing. It’s incredible.
In the movie, it’s immediately established that anything you’re seeing could be real or could be CGI. I had no way of knowing what was real or fake, so it just felt like it was all fake. I guess the dancing was cool? I honestly couldn’t tell you bc I wasn’t paying attention becuase a CGI cat doing ballet is not interesting or impressive to me.
(Side note, I hate seeing the CGI get dragged, becuase I think the VFX people did their job & did it well. The way Hooper decided to use the CGI was horrendous and ruined the whole movie)
So, fine. the dancing element of Cats is out. I can at least enjoy the music, right? Nope. Hooper ruined EVERY SINGLE SONG and consistently omitted the things from each song that make them so powerful and make me love the musical. As every new song started, It would build up…. And fall flat (or in some cases, crash & burn). Over and over again. I could feel myself getting more frustrated as time went on.
Right after Mungojerry & Rumpleteezer (in which Hooper chose to use the boring British version of the song), I was like “fuck this. I don’t have to put up with this on my birthday” and left.
Edit: long rant spelling errors
The problem with Cats is that it's too easy to deconstruct the thought process that created it.
"Reynolds! Stop reading scripts and get in here now."
"What is it, sir?"
"Disney are raking in billions with live action remakes. Aladdin. The Lion King. The same freaking story you already know but with people instead of cartoons. I want in on that action. What have we got?"
"Well, we're not Disney, sir. So we're going to have to do something public domain or lesser known."
"How about Cinderella?"
"Disney already did it. Last year."
"Dammit! Why am I always the last to know about these things?"
"In fact, the only property that hasn't been remade in the last ten years is Cats."
"That weird musical that doesn't have a plot?"
"Yes sir."
"Alright, let's do it. What's our budget? $100m? Let's spend $99m hiring Taylor Swift. The rest can pay for effects. Call James Corden - he'll work for nothing just to feel like a star. "
"Uh, $99m doesn't buy a lot of Taylor Swift's time these days sir. She'll only be in the movie for about ten minutes."
"Then we'll cast someone else in the lead and pin this entire production on the shoulders of a complete unknown. Heck, it worked for Superman Returns. It made Brandon Routh the biggest star in the world. Light my cigar, Reynolds! This project is greenlit!"
Are you asking was that nightmare fuel bad?
I mean... Yeah, sort of. I maintain that the uncanny valley CGI was terrible, but that was the only truly serious problem of the movie. Other than that, it was a fine musical.
well beside having barely any plot and there TOO MUCH MUSIC it fucking boring(also fucking cat pun)
Cat got your tongue?
oh yeah not like the movie havent spam THAT joke before sigh.......
Cats makes The Last Airbender look like it should deserve Best Picture.
The Last Airbender is one of the most painfully boring movies of all time, I honestly can’t think of anything good about it. I think that the only serious problem with Cats is the uncanny valley CGI, which was a major miscalculation on their part. Other than that, it had good performances, dance numbers, singing and set design. As I said though, I have a soft spot for musicals, so I might be a little biased.
It falls into the weird area where some of it is so horrendous that you can't call it good, but not enough of it where you can watch it ironically to get a laugh out of it.
It's ok at best, and has some good set design with one or two good songs, and a whole lot of boring meh inbetween. The CGI is also horrendous, and the plot is basically incomprehensible.
Fair enough, perhaps part of it is that I went into it expecting something at the level of The Room. It was really not. However, I absolutely see where you’re coming from, and I respect that.
I just don’t think it was something that should have been adapted to a “live action film” part of the appeal of the Cats play is the experience of seeing it in person. The elaborate costumes, sets, and how the cast interacts with the audience is what made it special in the first place. That tangible aspect just doesn’t translate well to film. There really isn’t a plot or any of story elements that you would associate with a mainstream film. So, I would say it was doomed from the start. It’s also just really inept and it seemed like Tom Hooper was just way in over his head. I personally don’t know if it’s one of the “Worst movies” ever made. They atleast actually tried and some of the songs are well performed. But, I would say it’s one of the toughest movies to sit through and I think if most people were to turn it on then they would switch it off at the 20 minute mark.
It's so bad even the cinema sins review is hard to watch..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2mAMRq6ENM
I have no idea how I stumbled across this lmao but as someone who grew up watching the 1998 Cats stage production movie and absolutely LOVING it, I feel like the movie just fell flat. The musical itself doesn't have any plot so the charm comes from the music, dancing, and characters. For me, the 2019 movie changed so much about all three that it just completely lost it's charm. ESPECIALLY Mr. Mistoffelees, what did they do to him 😭
I didn't think it was really all that terrible either. It certainly wasn't great, and it had more than its share of cringe moments, but I don't feel like I lost any brain cells by watching it, though I did want to wash my eyeballs with enzyme cleaner on occassion.It was a brave effort, albeit with a few (at worst) sloppy, and (at best) misguided directorial decisions, but CGI furry nekedness and airbrushed genitals aside, I agree that plot-wise it was a clever adaptation of the relatively plotless stage musical into a movie format. That's about all the good as I can say about it however. I don't think it really deserved the utter slating it received. The trouble is that when it comes to adaptations of famously enduring London stage productions, and you deliberately leave out any of the people involved in that stage production so you can make the movie your own, fans of the stage show get highly protective and snobby about it. I may watch it again some day, but only for a drunken laugh with friends, or my cat.
If anything, it made me want to pick up and watch the infinitely superior '98 movie of the stage production again - just as it was supposed to be viewed, and that's not a bad thing.
Both Rebel Wilson and James Corden should be sentenced to some sort of comedy penal colony, especially after they both threw the effects team under the bus during the Oscars.
Me, watching the Cats trailer: "This looks bad, but I might be willing to watch it just because of how absurd it seems."
James Corden appears.
Me: "Oh. Never mind."
Yeah, that wasn’t right of them. It was not the fault of the effects team. The decision to have such a large cast of characters with mocap was completely misguided. It would need an enormous effort and budget to make it remotely close to realistic, and they should have caught that early on. They should have just gone with the costumes from the stage play. It would have looked much better and saved them a lot of money.
It had way to much gibberish in the script and didn't get edgy enough for a movie about cats an animal so edgy they show there assholes to everybody....
I actually cried while watching Cats like 5 or 6 times. Very beautiful and vulnerable story overall being told about sentient creatures born misfit weak and needy yet perfect magical and musical. I don't know but I thought it was a good break from all of the predictable cinema lately. It's easy to be immature and to scoff at the cgi details and the absurdity but if you approach without the intent of criticizing you'll likely enjoy the film
I didn’t see the film. My question is how such a nonsense story survived for decades at the theaters before the film was released.
i actually wanted to go see in the cinema, but have yet to watch it at home
thought the whole idea was fascinating to see
Then youll love this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx0NLGcL6pI&feature=youtu.be in fact i know you loved it
This movie is an insult to cat lovers like who the hell likes this movie?
The cgi was great for the girls, horrible for the guys. And the songs were performed so poorly that they insult every previous version of them...this is a musical that never should have been put together with an attempt at a plot. All it was supposed to be was an introduction to the Jellicles. That's it.
Oh, my! The play and the movie are both unbelievable trainwrecks. NONE of the lyrics are memorable or make sense. Starting with jellicle cats. Feel free to look up the "lyrics" and try to convince yourself that anyone involved knew what they were doing. The lyrics mean...nothing. And the story is both indecipherable and utterly boring.
It had a lot of enthusiasm and visual stuff going on, I was high while watching it and it felt like I was watching a funner comedic version of James Cameron's Avatar
It was hated by and large because
All the catgirls were literally just "girl cats" and gave critics confused 6oners
Only Japan is allowed to make anything THIS weird. But it wasn't made there
How was Taylor swift in cata