In the case of Cats, CGI fur, ears, and tails are superimposed on human actors, but the effect is so uncanny that it seems as though things were done the other way around. The cats all look like larger versions of the cat Jemaine Clement turns himself into in What We Do in the Shadows - he says he “always gets the faces wrong” when he transforms, which is why he comes out as a cat with a human face superimposed on it. Cats is a fever dream, a hallucination, an approximation of what would happen if your third eye actually opened and you could suddenly see into the astral plane. In fairness, though, Hooper’s Cats defies all principles of linear time or practical storytelling. The film cuts about 40 minutes of these shenanigans, even though it adds a new song, delivered by Victoria (ballerina Francesca Hayward), an abandoned cat who becomes something of an audience surrogate. For almost two and a half hours, a bunch of cats sing about themselves, and then one cat gets picked to go to heaven - excuse me, the Heaviside Layer. It’s worth mentioning that Webber’s original stage musical barely has a plot. It does, however, have a fully nude but Ken-Dolled Idris Elba, Ian McKellen lapping milk out of a platter, cats getting yeeted into thin air, dancing cockroaches with human faces, and Jason Derulo screaming, “MILK!” Tom Hooper’s film adaptation neuters all three aspects.
There are three good things to be said about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical Cats: It’s an impressive showcase for dancers, the costumes are inventive, and the songs, while nonsense, are catchy.
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