# Cats Trailer out **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 19, 2019, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296 "2019-07-19T08:40:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2019, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/101 "2019-12-27T23:29:40Z")
Has anyone here seen it? I’d really like the run down from an actual viewer. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2019, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/102 "2019-12-27T23:50:51Z")
[Evan Rachel Wood is not a fan](https://www.pajiba.com/celebrities_are_better_than_you/evan-rachel-wood-has-some-strong-opinions-on-cats.php). ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2019, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/103 "2019-12-27T23:57:05Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > [Evan Rachel Wood is not a fan](https://www.pajiba.com/celebrities_are_better_than_you/evan-rachel-wood-has-some-strong-opinions-on-cats.php). (BTW, if you can’t view the video review she gave, I have transcribed it: “What the fuck? What the fuuuck? What the fuuuck? What? What? What? The fuck? What the fuuuck? Oh my god!”) ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/104 "2019-12-28T00:39:23Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > Has anyone here seen it? I’d really like the run down from an actual viewer. Here is one person, not a critic, quick take: > [@](#): > > I finally had the opportunity to watch Cats last night with a friend. We were sure to get a little liquored up ahead of time, as we knew it was going to be an experience. > > The movie begins with our hero being unceremoniously thrown into an alley by her previous owner, which leads directly into an opening number about Jellical cats, something that isn’t really explained but I guess it’s what cats strive to become. > > From there you’re on a whirlwind of nonsensical musical numbers that introduce characters but still doesn’t really explain the plot, which has something to do with reincarnation. > > There’s also magic and a cat that lives on trains. > > The whole film is bizarre, confounding and tragically boring. Despite all the glitz and glamour at first appearance, the film is ultimately just boring. My friend fell asleep. > > My biggest gripe is our hero, who is supposed to introduce us to this world of cats through her eyes, doesn’t do much and not much is explained. She just seems to accept the world without question. > > I’m not even sure this is really movie as opposed to a abstract modern art film. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/105 "2019-12-28T04:26:37Z")
I can appreciate criticisms like “bad CGI”, “bad camera work”, “not enough dancing”, and “mediocre musical score”, which, in sufficient degree, can fuck up this movie and render it Officially Bad. But, “boring”? “No plot”? It’s a bunch of songs about cats. What was your friend expecting? Did he or she have the same problem with the London (or similar) version? The poems themselves do an excellent job of “introducing us to this world of cats”, so, and your friend may have a crucial point here, the cinema may have been more a haphazardly thrown together mass of imagery the director thought looked cool rather than reinforcing the lyrics. Maybe the whole thing would have worked better with the video mostly replaced by relevant videos of actual cats? I’m mostly worried this will impact my funding for doing the Police in Different Voices. ETA I really need to see it again before pronouncing judgement… what’s the story with the revised cut btw? ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2019, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/106 "2019-12-30T04:52:43Z")
Singing cockroaches with human faces. :eek: That image will haunt me now. Just saw this tonight. This film was such a misfire. . I don’t even know who their target audience was supposed to be. I am not ashamed to say that CATS was the first Broadway show I saw as a kid and I loved it! I got the CD immediately and played it on rotation until I knew every single song. I adored that music and the show. I then saw the revival a few years back, now as an adult, and while I wasn’t as mesmerized as I was as a child, I still enjoyed it and the music. I would have thought I’d be a perfect target for this film. And yet I spent half the film laughing at the utter absurdity and bizarreness of it. The “plot” they tried to shoehorn into it is idiotic and is worse than the criticisms that the musical had “no plot.” The plot to the stage version is simple, all the cats sing about themselves and then one is chosen to be reborn. That is it. It is simply the poems of TS Elliot set to music and dancing, and is basically a series of vignettes. There is no villain, no antagonist. Everything that was added that was not in the original show is terrible, unfunny, and makes no sense, the new song included. They ruined the music for Mungojerrie and Rumpleteezer and totally neutered Mr Mistofelees. Jason Derulo made the Rum Tum Tugger indecipherable if you were not already familiar with the lyrics. And I think Jennyantdots will give me nightmares. Those mice?! Unzipping her skin!? The people around me were also big fans of the show, they knew the lyrics to many songs, and they were also laughing at so much of it. I haven’t even mentioned the CGI. The only faces that worked were the ones that had the large ruff to balance out the human features. Otherwise human noses and big pink lips do not work on tiny cat faces. Simply adding cat noses would have fixed so much… Ugh, such a disappointment. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_T-Cups](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@Sir\_T-Cups](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_T-Cups)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/107 "2019-12-31T00:49:33Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > Has anyone here seen it? I’d really like the run down from an actual viewer. I’m an actual viewer and here’s my review for it. Let’s start by saying I’ve never seen the play, I don’t know jack about the characters and the only thing I know about the whole deal is that Memory is a gorgeous song. I read the reviews and couldn’t wait to see the dumpster fire and after seeing it I thought it was…not godawful. Sure, the CGI was weird and inconsistent and made no sense (why are some naked and some clothed? Where did those random Converse All-Stars come from?) and the songs were random and not very catchy (I blame that on the play though), but on the whole it was perfectly fine for what it was. I came into the movie preparing to be mildly entertained and cry like a baby during Memory, and what happened? I was mildly entertained and I cried like a baby during Memory. Do I recommend? Eh, probably not. Was it a complete waste of my time? Nah, it was fine. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/108 "2019-12-31T02:13:35Z")
> [@Sir\_T-Cups](#): > > Where did those random Converse All-Stars come from? I haven’t seen the film but if it’s anything like the play and giant shoes kept landing amid the action, they represented humans throwing old shoes at the alley cats for being too loud. Having owned cats for most of my adult life, I can sympathize. Noisy, whiny little creeps they can be. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_T-Cups](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@Sir\_T-Cups](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_T-Cups)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/109 "2019-12-31T02:19:28Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I haven’t seen the film but if it’s anything like the play and giant shoes kept landing amid the action, they represented humans throwing old shoes at the alley cats for being too loud. > > Having owned cats for most of my adult life, I can sympathize. Noisy, whiny little creeps they can be. Lol nope, that’d be too easy. Two of the cats during one of the dancing scenes magically had All-Stars on. My guess, and I’m pretty sure I’m right, was that it was a design choice because it’s the types of shoes worn by the dancers IRL. I just thought it was funny that all of a sudden the cats are wearing modern-era shoes for seemingly no reason. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/110 "2019-12-31T02:33:37Z")
There are all kinds of inconsistent things like that. For instance, a tap-dancing cat might be wearing clearly visible tap-dancing shoes, but other times ballet shoes worn by cats will have been erased via bad CGI. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/111 "2019-12-31T13:34:54Z")
My daughter went to see this - she suggested I wait till it shows up on Netflix or whatever. I’ll probably take her advice, especially based on what I’ve read here. I’ve seen the show 3 or 4 times, plus I have the video version of the stage show. I was looking forward to seeing the same thing with a different take on the costuming, but a “plot”? No thanks. I’m disappointed already. Dammit. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/112 "2019-12-31T13:42:08Z")
If you have already seen it on stage(or seen a video of the stage production) the movie is even worse. They have ruined a lot of the characters and the tacky tacked-on plotline screams “I am going to take this established hit and make it my own!” I had a free pass and I still want my money back. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/113 "2019-12-31T14:18:19Z")
[Cats Pitch Meeting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsNAu72v2Yc&list=PL--PgETgAz5FGoatB9KQzbnpv0bgZqU2l). ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/114 "2019-12-31T14:57:29Z")
I want to know not only who green-lit this thing, but approved a $100 million budget for it. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/115 "2019-12-31T16:24:16Z")
My 20 year old son went to see it (ironically) with some friends the other day and returned saying that it wasn’t _good_ but it wasn’t as terrible as he had feared/hoped. He had a couple years of choir/drama in high school so maybe that helped although he’d never seen the musical before. Basically, he thought the songs were fairly well done and there were a couple character concepts he liked but he agreed with the world that the CGI was awful, watching cat-people groom themselves was unnerving and sometimes they’d have long extended shots of just someone’s face, singing (“What am I supposed to do with that?”). So nothing you’d want to pay money to watch but, in his opinion, not as gouge-your-eyes-out dire as the reviews would suggest. > [@jz78817](#): > > I want to know not only who green-lit this thing, but approved a $100 million budget for it. That doesn’t surprise me. It spent a long time as the most successful production on Broadway so it stands to reason someone thought it would be a successful holiday-season big budget film. That it went so wrong is what’s surprising. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/116 "2019-12-31T16:27:47Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > [Cats Pitch Meeting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsNAu72v2Yc&list=PL--PgETgAz5FGoatB9KQzbnpv0bgZqU2l). Well, _everything_ sounds stupid if you _describe_ it! ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/117 "2020-01-01T06:12:32Z")
Did anyone consider the words and notice little incongruities, like Macavity should be a skinny ginger cat? The black cat is Mr. Mistoffelees, who is also specifically a female, the same way Mrs. Chippy was an intact tom. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/118 "2020-01-01T06:32:19Z")
[‘Cats’ Headed for $100 Million Box Office Loss](https://variety.com/2019/film/box-office/cats-box-office-losses-flop-1203453171/) > [@](#): > > “Cats” cost $100 million to produce and set Universal back an additional $95 million to $100 million for global marketing and distribution fees, according to studio insiders. Global earnings after two weeks are $38 million. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/119 "2020-01-01T14:01:23Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > [‘Cats’ Headed for $100 Million Box Office Loss](https://variety.com/2019/film/box-office/cats-box-office-losses-flop-1203453171/) > > Global earnings after two weeks are $38 million. Using their numbers I don’t see how they come up with $100M loss. It is going to be far worse than that. Even including guesstimates of post-theatrical revenue. And their estimates for both production and marketing are too low. The lowest loss estimate I’d give is $150M. But I’m sure the studio bookkeepers\* will find ways to hide some of that in other budget items. - It always disappoints me that this isn’t spelled with two "p"s. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296/120 "2020-01-01T16:30:53Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > The black cat is Mr. Mistoffelees, who is also specifically a female, the same way Mrs. Chippy was an intact tom. :dubious: Explain please? The lyrics specify nothing of the sort. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cats-trailer-out/837296.md?page=7)