Cats
There are mostly two type of successful stage musical : the crowd - pleasers approachable to a wide hearing and the weird cultus hits that appeal to a niche crowd . It ’s what makes the wholeCatsphenomenon such a alone exclusion to the rule . Andrew Lloyd Webber ’s capricious ' fourscore Broadway megamusical is based on equally notional author material ( T.S. Eliot’sOld Possum ’s Book of Practical Catspoetry collection ) , has little actual plot , and is known for its polarizing aesthetic and framework . Add similarly factious director Tom Hooper - the filmmaker who shot much of his Best Picture winning period dramaThe King ’s Speechlike an episode ofMr . Robot- to the admixture and you ’ve catch the double-dyed recipe for a wonderfully bonkers movie adaptation . Catsbrings Webber ’s Broadway maven to sprightliness as an audaciously off-the-wall spectacle sure to enjoy and part as much as the original musical does .
What plot there is boiling point down to this : one night , a naive young cat name Victoria ( Royal Ballet dancer Francesca Hayward ) is abandoned in a back - alley , lend her side to face with the members of the Jellicle cat tribe . turn out , tonight is the night of the Jellicle Ball , an event in which the overbold and aged Old Deuteronomy ( Judi Dench ) will make " the Jellicle choice " and make up one’s mind which of them is desirable of ascending to the Heaviside Layer and returning to a new life . But as the various Jellicle cats prepare for the night ’s festivity , the knavish and magically power Macavity ( Idris Elba ) collude to take out his competition .
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Those familiar with the Broadway melodic knowCatsis a proper litmus test exam for just how much one loves the fine art of musical theater in and of itself , and the motion picture variant is no dissimilar . If anything , Hooper and his co - writer Lee Hall ( Rocketman ) lean into the show ’s bizarreness and treble down on it with their adaptation . This is a film where cat wear fur coats ( because of course they would ) , Rebel Wilson ’s pampered Jennyanydots qat do a Busby Berkeley - style dance number with other creatures that have human faces ( you translate that aright ) , and Taylor Swift ’s flirtatious Bombalurina show up up to get everyone high on Nepeta cataria before clearing out after a single scene ( fairish warning : these cat are more than a small horny ) . Anyone who ’s down for this trade name of madness should mostly retrieve themselves swept up intoCats ' fantastically demented voyage , power by the vaporous catchiness of Webber ’s clearly off - beat ' 80s tune , all of which have their charms . Bless them , the cast is just as committed to this lunacy as their theater director , and there ’s nary a trace of self - cognizance as they bat , hiss , nestle , or chuck out cat - puns at one another .
Like the stage show , Catshas a introductory content ( kindness and acceptance are good , tribalism and ego - serving behaviour are bad ) , and its floor is a secondary business organization to its craftsmanship . For the pic , Hooper made the sheer choice to transform his mold into very eldritch - look humanoid cats the size of actual felid ( with virtual Set manufacture to scale ) using so - hollo " digital fur technology " . But as slow as the CGI trickery is to mock , it has the want effect , allowingCatsto transport interview to a world that feels as far removed from world as possible , despite it being ( austensibly ) set in England . If Hooper went too far with the naturalism in hisLes Misérablesmusical adpatation , he goes to the polar extreme here , and for good reason . There ’s nothing even remotely " existent " about this setting , so the artifice of the cast ’s appearances only add to the febricity dream - quality of the whole affair . And because there ’s so much attractively balletic dancing choreography to catch ( in addition to Eve Stewart ’s splendid production blueprint ) , Hooper and his DP Christopher Ross are force to blast most of the moving picture in fluid , wide - slant photographic camera pellet - shots that , confessedly , incline to be edit together in an unrhythmical way which detracts from the musical number more than enhances them .
In maliciousness of its every bit shoddy sound design ( Hooper , like onLes Mis , has his cast sing live , but their vocal music are poorly blended with the instrumentation),Catsperfectly match its actors to their respective role . Though Hayward does n’t hale from an act background signal , Victoria is characterized more through dance and song ( her solo tune , " Beautiful Ghosts " , was written for the film by Swift and Webber , and if you did n’t know well , you would recollect it was part of the original leg show ) , allowing the ballerina to smoothen as the feline ingénue . Wilson , Swift , James Corden ( as Bustopher Jones , a qat who loves being fat ) , and Jason Derulo ( as the " pelvic arch " Rum Tum Tugger ) likewise bring their melodic talents to the table , give way each of their big numbers a typical sound and literary genre vibe . Dench and Ian McKellen ( as Gus , the revered old theatre Arabian tea ) take more of a sing - speak approach to their tunes , but the pair are warm and tender , and grammatical gender - swop Deuteronomy rick out to be a move for the good . And though Elba is queerly charismatic as the conniving Macavity , the standout supporting cat - player is easy Jennifer Hudson as the lonely and decrepit Grizabella ; her powerhouse rendition of the adorable " Memory " is one to remember ( sound issues aside ) .
Perhaps more than any other film resign this year , Catsis a movie you could moderately judge by its marketing . If keep an eye on the movie ’s trailers leave you with little to absolutely no desire to see the whole affair , then it ’s safe to assumeCatswon’t be your cupful of tea . But if the prevue leave you delirious to line up out just how ridiculous Hooper ’s motion-picture show adaptation sincerely is - and/or you ’re a fan of the original Broadway megamusical who ’s hoping the big screen version captures its inspired eccentricity in cinematic form - thenCatsis very much worth a feeling in theaters . Who bonk : this may yet go down as the chef-d’oeuvre of musical insaneness Hooper had inside him all along .
NEXT : Watch the Official Cats Trailer
Catsis now toy in U.S. theaters . It is 109 second long and is tell on PG for some rude and revelatory humor .
An adaptation of the stage musical by the same name, Cats boasts a star-studded cast playing the Jellicles, a tribe of street cats who make a choice once a year about which one of them will ascend to what they call the Heavenside Layer and be reborn to a new life. The original musical is itself based on a book by famous poet T.S. Eliot, and remains one of the longest-running Broadway shows.
An adaptation of the level melodious by the same name , Cats bluster a star - dot cast playing the Jellicles , a tribe of street cats who make a choice once a year about which one of them will ascend to what they call the Heavenside Layer and be converted to a new life . The original musical is itself based on a book by famous poet T.S. Eliot , and stay on one of the longest - lead Broadway demo .
