CATS

Stars: Francesca Hayward, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, James Corden, Robbie Fairchild, Mette Towley, Ray Winstone, Laurie Davidson, Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo, Naoimh Morgan, Laurent and Larry Bourgeois and Taylor Swift.
Writers: Lee Hall and Tom Hooper; based upon Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’.
Director: Tom Hooper.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Director Tom Hooper set himself a much harder task shepherding Cats to the big-screen than his previous musical adaptation, Les Misérables (2012). Andrew Lloyd Webber’s wildly imaginative, unashamedly odd live theatre smash hit could not be afforded the same instant gravitas as the Oscar-winning reworking of Victor Hugo’s historical epic. The putrid squalor, brutal militarism and class struggles of post-revolution France made Les Misérables immediately relevant and easily analysed by critics and awards season marketeers.

As the early wave of “What the f**k?” reviews suggests, making Cats a relatable movie-going experience for any one not entirely enamoured with the source material has proven a tad tougher. A fantastical vision that requires the kind of suspended disbelief and unskeptical submissiveness for which mainstream audiences (and most critics) are not known, Hooper has undertaken a momentous task of cinematic world building that must at once be tied to its iconic stage roots while also establishing its own need for being. Few contemporary movie works carry that baggage at every stage of their development and execution.

As with the stage production, the narrative is both a relatively straightforward fantasy premise, yet wonderfully nutty. In a London alleyway, a white kitten called Victoria (Royal Ballet principal Francesca Hayward, a striking and angelic presence on-screen) is abandoned, yet immediately finds community with a collection of strays known as The Jellicle Cats. Led by Munkustrap (Robbie Fairchild), the Jellicles are preparing for the arrival of Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), who will oversee a song-and-dance contest from which one cat will receive passage to ‘The Heaviside Layer’ and return with renewed life.

The dramatic conflict comes in the form of Macavity (Idris Elba), a mean-spirited moggie with the ability to whisk away in a cloud of magical mist all those who threaten his quest for life-giving ascension. This includes railway yard ginger Skimbleshanks (Steven McRae), ageing theatrical cat Gus (Ian McKellen) and the film’s comic relief duo, tubby tabby Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson) and ‘puss in spats’ fat cat Bustopher Jones (James Corden). Central to Victoria’s journey is the most magical of Jellicles, Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson), and the once regal but now dishevelled outcast, Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson).    

Hooper and his daring troupe in front of and behind the camera have drawn inspiration from the stage-bound cats that have gone before; cast wear anthropomorphic make-up and full body fur-suits, with CGI tails and ears bolstering the effect. Despite family-friendly ratings in most territories, the lithe frames of the dance troupe in their ‘cat-tards’ enhances the inherent sexuality of the feline form. Unlike the vast sets and multiple locations at his disposal for Les Misérables, Hooper is very much studio-bound with Cats, but he utilises the space with remarkable skill; below-the-line contributors such as production designer Eve Stewart and art director Tom Weaving exhibit the best their craft has to offer. In this regard, the production has crafted the near-perfect stage-to-screen work.

In fact, Hooper and his team have nailed the transition in every other regard, too. Hudson finds all the emotion in the signature tune, ‘Memory’, belting out the classic with a combination of rage and hopelessness that tears at you like it should; when given full flight, Hayward is a vision of graceful physicality, embodying both doe-eyed innocence and strong-willed goodness; showstoppers from the stage show hit similar highs, notably Jason Derulo’s ‘Rum Tum Tugger’ and Davidson’s version of ‘Mr Mistoffelees’; and, superstar Taylor Swift vamps it up as Bombalurina, who croons the torch song intro for Elba’s bad guy, ‘Macavity’.

Granted, there are moments that invite bewilderment; the ‘Cockroach Chorus Line’ sequence may ask too much of even the most committed fan. And the familiar comic stylings of Wilson and Corben prove occasionally jarring in the midst of the otherwise all-encompassing Jellicle world.

Andrew Lloyd Webber began writing Cats from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ in 1977, and in the context of that decade’s more ‘out there’ musical endeavours, a play about alley cats being reincarnated seems totally rational. This was, after all, the decade of ‘The New Wave Musical’, which saw the rise of Webber (Evita; Jesus Christ Superstar) and his American contemporary, Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd), while Hollywood tried to keep up by offering such cinematic sing-alongs as The Wiz, Lost Horizon and Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In 2019, foisting such whimsy on a society poised with web-knives sharpened was perhaps the single miscalculation made by Tom Hopper and Universal Pictures; the studio pumped US$100million into the project, which has bounced around the LA and London film sectors for four decades (Amblin Entertainment came close to making an animated version, hence Steven Spielberg’s E.P. credit).

In the new era of ‘fan-service cinema’, Hooper and co-writer Lee Hall have set a new high-water mark. Cats is exactly the stage play experience, compensating for the loss of the live theatre element with its own rich cinematic energy. If issues arise for you such as ‘Where are their nipples?’ or ‘But the ears look weird…’, Cats is already not your saucer of cream, so move on. Hooper’s surrealistic song-and-dance spectacle, steeped in joyous musical theatre lore and rich with the emotions of acceptance and forgiveness, is exactly what we need right now.