CATS: The Bad Film You Hoped It Would Be

We ask our grandparents where they were when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, we ask our parents where they were when the Berlin Wall fell, and our own children are likely to ask us where we were when saw the first trailer for Tom Hooper’s Cats. On Thursday, July 18th, the debut teaser for the director’s big budget adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical did the unthinkable and managed to unite people online. This was a trailer so exquisitely bad, that for a moment it felt like the universal derision afforded to it by all corners of the internet could be an unexpected first step towards world peace.

A Bad Movie to Unite Humanity

But divided we remain. For the past five months, no matter how hopeless things may have been in the real world, from political traumas (Boris Johnson winning the UK election on a landslide) to personal ones (a relationship ended after three and a half years, I was diagnosed with depression), the one thing getting me through is the knowledge I would eventually see Tom Hooper’s Cats, and all would be right with the world. “Everything may seem bleak right now”, I’d tell myself, “but on December 20th, the world will see something so transcendentally terrible, we’ll be able to start healing and progressing as a society, our shared bafflement at Tom Hooper’s Cats tying us together”.

Well, Boris Johnson is still Prime Minister, I’m still single and I’m still battling depression every day. But I have seen Cats – and for a couple of hours, all my problems faded away, as I got exactly the kind of terrible movie I’d been yearning for since seeing the trailer earlier in the summer. The critics and audiences calling Cats the worst movie of the year are doing it something of a disservice; it’s unquestionably a bad film, but it’s the kind of bad film that unintentionally becomes a crowd pleasing comedy due to how many bizarre missteps it makes throughout.

I ended up enjoying my time with it, albeit for reasons Tom Hooper surely didn’t intend. With each joyful “what the f*ck?” I seemed to involuntarily ask out loud every single minute of the runtime, I could feel myself wishing all bad movies were like this – and how, if you held a gun to my head, I’d choose to watch Cats over any competently made (but middle of the road) blockbuster franchise effort any day of the week. 

The plot of Cats is as simple as it is absolutely f*cking inexplicable. A young cat named Victoria (Francesca Hayward, in her debut screen/digital fur tech performance) is thrown into the streets, and ends up befriending a group of strays known as the Jelliciles, who live on London’s streets. Coincidentally, it’s the day of the year where they throw the “Jellicle Ball” where Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench, in a performance that feels like elder abuse) gets to decide which cat will be allowed to take on a new life and ascend to the Heaviside Layer – a decision she makes by getting any interested cats to perform songs for her. But this year, the fiendish Macavity (Idris Elba) is kidnapping the cats, to make sure she has no choice but make him ascend to the next life.

Great Fun – but not in the way Tom Hooper intended

As a stage musical, Cats was always criticised because of having no plot, with the songs nearly unanimously existing to give expository backstory about each of the cats. It’s the sheer indestructible catchiness of the musical numbers that led it to become one of the longest running Broadway shows of all time, and even Hooper’s ineptitude at translating this to the screen can’t stop these ear worms nestling in your brain for hours afterwards. Of course, he does his best to try; he often pauses musical numbers for cringeworthy gags, at one point, even pauses to play a trap beat so Rebel Wilson can dance to it. But in both its moments of visceral cringe, and its moments of uniquely batshit insanity, Cats somehow becomes far more entertaining than his Oscar nominated take on Les Miserables (all joking aside: it might even be a better film too).

I left Cats with a smile on my face – it was exactly the kind of bad film I wanted, complete with Ray Winstone musical numbers, the sight of Ian McKellen drinking milk from a saucer, and multiple scenes of genuinely haunting horniness. Which returns me to that age old conundrum: how can I possibly give this film a bad review if it gave me joy (albeit not the kind of joy it intended to give), and how could I give it a positive appraisal with a straight face, when it’s the baffling creative decisions throughout that made me respond with glee? Cats doesn’t exist on the good/bad binary; it’s a clear failure from the perspective of what Tom Hooper set out to achieve, but the strangeness is endearing, and it is alien for a blockbuster film of this scale to not feel corporate and micromanaged. 

Released on a weekend where JJ Abrams’ latest Star Wars effort is disappointing fans due to making “safe” narrative choices, we should be celebrating a film that boldly refused to play it safe – it may not have paid off, but midnight movie audiences will be rapturously devouring Cats for years to come, while Rise of the Skywalker will likely be forgotten by the end of its theatrical run. Tom Hooper isn’t a particularly talented director, but in spite of himself, he’s created the wild antithesis to the respectable, middlebrow awards bait movies that are usually his bread and butter.

Cats: Conclusion

You will likely hate Cats, but you won’t regret watching it. It’s a bad studio movie for the ages – and when soulless Disney franchises and remakes are dominating the box office, we should embrace an unprecedented disaster like this while we can. Lord knows the studio execs will never let a film quite like this be released any time in the near future, and cinema will be worse off because of it. 

Cats is in cinemas now. Nothing is stopping you, go watch it.