The Catastrophe of the Movie “Cats” 

With 20% Rotten Tomatoes and a 2.8/10 review on IMDb the movie “Cats” directed by Tom Hooper was , “The worst movie of the year,” according to Rolling Stone.  But if you enjoy adults crawling around, licking themselves while singing, “Cats” might be the movie for you. With all the A-list actors and actresses including Jennifer Hudson, Rebel Wilson, Idris Elba, and Judy Dench the film still fell below many standards of moviegoers.  

Based on the Broadway musical “Cats”, this movie is loosely about a group of felines called the Jellicles who make a yearly decision of which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer (a.k.a. heaven) and come back to a new life as a new cat. However, you would have to Google that to know what the movie was actually about. The Broadway musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, was a big hit on the stage and remains the fourth longest running Broadway musical. With such a popular musical to go off of, the movie was already put up to very high standards. 

Overall, the movie was  very confusing. The whole first half of the movie was introducing characters one right after the other with a new song. The characters sang songs that are barely understandable which made it hard to tell what was actually going on. 

The first character who is introduced is the white cat, Victoria played by Francesca Hayward. She is thrown into the street in a bag and the other street cats sing to her about Jellicle cats. There is little to no background information about this character who ends up being the main character in the movie. The next character is Jennyanydots, played by Rebel Wilson who is a competitor in the chance to go to the Heaviside Layer. She is introduced by dancing around in her kitchen with cockroaches and mice and singing a song about how she sits all day and that’s why she wants to become a new cat in the Heaviside Layer. Not to mention that Taylor Swift comes down on a floating moon and sprays catnip glitter on everyone for no apparent reason. 

Besides the complicated plot, the size of the cats was all kinds of wrong. At some points, they are the size of a normal human, and then they can fit a ring around their wrist. No one really knows what actual size the cats are. 

The movie wasn’t considered a total flop;the dancing was actually

quite good. The main character Victoria played by Francesca Hayward is a principal ballet dancer in the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in London. Also, the film had many professional dancers as cats as well. The dance routines were very intricate with several lifts and stunts. Jason Derulo who played Rum Tum Tugger, added a nice touch with his more hip hop style to differ from the more classical ballet cats. 

 Overall, I think the movie was what no one was expecting to be , for sure not Webber’s or even Hooper’s. For most people it was a confusing walk out of the theater trying to wrap their head around what they just watched. While deciding to go see this movie or not, really keep in mind if you even like cats.