Cats was... an abomination.
Seriously, this movie is so awful in so many unique and bewildering ways, I truly don't understand who decided it was a good idea to spend one hundred million dollars on this.
To preface, I've never seen the musical, so I'm not in any way comparing it to that. The plot is nonexistent, the film literally goes nowhere and at under two hours still feels like its worn out its welcome before the halfway point. If you're into endurance trials that plunge you deep into the uncanny valley while warbling nonsense at you with the occasional hackneyed Rebel Wilson gag thrown in, then this is the film for you.
This is the ugliest movie I've seen all year, the designs for the cats are these horrifying mutants that look like something out of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Some of the cats wear fur coats on top of their fucking fur and some of them have clothing built into their body designs with creepy folds of loose skin. To make it worse, the cats are all weirdly horny and constantly writhing around each other twitching their tails and rubbing their necks against each other. It's almost two hours of cat mutant orgy sans genitals.
I'm no stranger to camp and can certainly appreciate it in the right context but this film's tone does not at all match its presentation, the whole affair is weirdly self-serious which makes it hard to even enjoy as a 'so bad it's good' sort of film.
The musical numbers themselves are mostly fine, one of them even got me all misty despite my complete lack of investment in the plot of the film. Jennifer Hudson's performance of "Memory" is hands down the best part of the entire flick. Despite the generally decent quality of the music, the actual substance is nonexistent. Most of the songs just consist of introducing another character that ends up playing virtually no further role in the film, there's very little connecting dialogue between songs as well so the film essentially just barrages you with these musical numbers that do nothing to create a compelling narrative to follow and subject you to deeply uncomfortable visuals. The songs all feel way too long as well, likely a result of the nonexistent plot and abysmal pacing.
This is such a weird movie to review, it's just doing everything wrong, like absolutely every choice this movie makes is awful. Yet the pedigree of those involved would suggest competence at the very least. Tom Hooper who's directed some solid films including a best picture winner The King's Speech, and more recently, the excellent His Dark Materials adaptation on HBO is seemingly high on catnip for the entire production. The film also features an all-star cast absolutely overflowing with talent, the likes of Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, and others. I genuinely don't get how this could turn out so awful.
Oh yea, the set design, it looks so over the top and at the time incredibly cheap, nothing matches in scale, it’s a total bust. Camp or no camp it just looks so egregiously fake, a ton of it is clearly just CGI'd in, including a bunch of props, even the fucking wine they pour into James Corden's mouth is CGI for some dumbass reason. I honestly feel like I'm missing some larger point about Cats, like this presentation must be intentional, and yet, no, it can't be, there's nothing redeeming about it. There's no clear intention behind the choices, the whole thing feels like someone took a stage play and let a small child scribble all over it with computer animation.
Overall, it was fucking awful and you shouldn't see it.
2/10 Cat Scat Fever