Try looking at the character design as an homage to Walt Kelly.
All I know is that when reviewers are describing the movie as being similar to a drug trip that ends up in murder, I think I’m going to wait until more of you fine people can give me your opinions.
The news keeps getting worse. BoxOfficeMojo’s Friday estimates has it opening at number 4 with only $2.6M. It’s not even beating Frozen II which has been out for a month. Fun fact, that’s less than 3% of Star Wars: The Rise of Disney brought in.
Christmas break helps movies make up box office during the weekdays, but this movie is in big trouble. The CinemaScore is C+. This is about as bad a CinemaScore you can get for a film like this. Once the holidays are over it will quickly fade.
BOM says the budget is $95M. But there was a lot of last minute work being done right up to the day of release*. Expect the actual number to be at least $20M higher. And the promo, etc. costs are going to be around that as well.
Good thing they waited 38 years to make the movie, right?
- Which might explain the CGI issues seen by some critics.
We took our daughters to Cats on Broadway and in Philadelphia more times than I’d like to admit. My older one saw it last night.
She thought it was 95% dreadful.
I’ll be waiting for the Rifftrax commentary track for this one 
it’s right up (down?) there with Birdemic, The Room, and Manos…
Changes after theatrical release are rare(I mean while they are still in the theater). I think The Shining deleted a scene at the end. Excorsist 2 was basically unfinished and made changes between weekend 1 and 2.
I hope we can see a side-by-side of Cats versions to know what they did.
I saw the original on Broadway a few times, and loved it.
I won’t be watching this movie.
As I mentioned on the Jesus Christ Superstar thread, my experience with essential theater is marginal. I dimly remember Annie, a takeoff of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and some Wizard of Oz thing, and that’s it. No Jesus Christ Superstar, no Little Shop of Horrors, no A Chorus Line, no Rocky Horror Show or Hair or Death of a Salesman or Phantom of the Opera or Rent or Angels in America. See, the thing is, theater is a stage performance, and therefore requires stage actors to do the stage performance, on stage, and given that I live an extraordinarily long distance from anyplace with a large number of stage actors, you can imagine how many chances I get to see essential theater.
So the bottom line is, no, I have never seen a stage performance of Cats, and therefore have absolutely no way of understanding why this play, and by extension this movie, is so agonizing for so many people. It’s all “Horrible! Awful! Kills your faith in movies! Make it stop!” (and of course the nimrods on YouTube are as useless as ever) but so far the only concrete complaints I’ve seen are “uncanny valley”, “super weird”, and “weak plot”, none of which is a dealbreaker for me. Even Moviebob, who’s normally as sharp as a knife about these things, can’t come up with much more than “boring”. Like I’ve mentioned many times before, I’ve lived horror and disgust on a near-constant basis for the first 18 years of my life, so “not as cute as Orin” doesn’t faze me in the slightest. Some of my most enjoyable cinematic experiences were super weird: Spaceballs, Labyrinth, Wayne’s World, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Muppet Movie, and the Naked Gun trilogy, to name a few; heck, Thelma and Louise got pretty damn bizarre by around the halfway mark. Plot? That only matters if the story is expected to carry the movie, like for, say, First Blood or Glengarry Glen Ross. Have you ever seen The Lego Movie? Animal House? Batman Returns? Well, I have, and the plots were all over the place. Didn’t stop them from becoming success stories.
So hell yeah, I’m going to watch this. Because it’s now reached the point where I have to experience this for myself. It looks like a fun, goofy spectacle and I think it has the potential to be entertaining. Is it? I have no freaking idea. So I’m seeing it, and ain’t nobody try to stop me.
That said, I haven’t had any interest in going to a theater in ages, and I’m pretty sure one viewing is going to be plenty enough, so I’m renting it. And I’m almost certainly going to have to turn the volume way, way down when it gets to Memory.
I look forward to your review.
Other criticisms notwithstanding, when you consider the ultimate source material, would you say there is supposed to be a plot? Some poetical coherence, sure, but I’m not sure there is supposed to be a story per se in the traditional sense.
:smack: You’re right about the name of the song. Guess I just can’t trust my…
wait for it…
wait for it…
recollections.
And I don’t know if I’m being whooshed about Streisand’s ego, but Elaine Page opened Cats in the West End as Grizabella; every other singer’s version of “Memory” is a cover.
Thank you for taking one for the team. 
Please come back and share.
I was thinking the update was removing some scenes and adding others. But I guess it’s so bad even that won’t help.
Black Nerd Comedy guy calls it a happening not to be miss.
This might be the movie of the year.
I’m too chicken to see this. I do know someone that would absolutely love it if they felt up to going but I don’t know if I can make it through the whole thing at once. That might be the true mark of a cult classic. The weaklings like me are weeded out.
When I first saw the ad I said “What the hell is that? Some sort of… sexy cat?”
Those are words I ever expected to say.
Holy uncanny valley, Catman!
sounds like a good choice for MST3K if it returns
Weekend total about $6.5M. Barely beating Knives Out which is in its 4th weekend.
Ouch.
Cats did make one notable list: Top 20 lowest opening for films released on 3000+ screens. Woo-hoo?
It’s officially a dud in all respects.
The numbers are getting brutal for Cats. On Christmas day, a major box office day, it finished 8th. The lowest per-screen average in the top 12. Total is now about $13M domestic.
It’s done for.
(And yet it’s getting “technical” award noms. I think it has a chance to do really well at the Golden Raspberries. Maybe going to be one of those surprisingly common deals where it gets an Oscar and a Razzie.)