The balance between a good and bad film are often measured by its crew, its production and development, and how much care and effort gets put into it. With this in mind, this is where the love for bad movies can sometimes come from; even when a film is clearly bad and features a lot of noticeable flaws, there can be a level of enjoyment that can come from bad movies, either through a likeably bad element, a clear sign of effort in certain areas or even enjoying a movie ironically even if it’s clearly bad all around. Bottom line, there is often a familiar level of bad that people can sometimes find positivity in; there has never been a movie that is anything like Cats. Cats started life as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical created in 1981, which in turn was based on the poetry collection, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, made in 1939 by T. S. Elliot. A polarising product from its beginnings, the concept of a film was conceived as early as the 1990s, but no one was willing to pick up a product with such a limited plot and anti-cinematic atmosphere. In 2016, Les Miserable director Tom Hooper was chosen, and the spiral of disbelief began as soon as the trailers were shown off, displaying hideous looking creatures with equally hideous looking effects. Coming out during Oscar session was one of its worst decisions, as Cats was not only deemed a terrible movie, but many consider it one of the worst of the decade. Set in a world of anthropomorphic Cats, a group of cats, known as ‘’Jellicles’’, hope to put on a musical spectacle in order to win themselves a place in the Heaviside, a chance at being reborn in a new life. All kinds of cats are hoping to win this chance and use whatever musical talents they have to get it, especially a stray cat named Macavity (played by Idris Elba) a cat who is kidnapping cats so he can be the one to reach Heaviside. The brief description of the plot is the bare amount of story that is given to this attempt at a ‘’film’’. The level of wrong that comes from this movie reaches any element that makes a film work; story, character, writing, directing, it is a complete train wreck that is a spectacle upon itself.

The Cats musical was never liked for its story, which it is strongly lacking only existing on a slight premise to show off a bunch of song numbers, instead of the songs connecting back to the overall plot. This film needed to update its basic plot and actually include a story in order for it to survive a cinematic outing, and it definitely does not do that. The film removes more than it adds, sticking to its sole premise as its guiding post for random song numbers with only an additional threat given to make it give it a sense of narrative. The movie does not really take advantage of its cinematic aspect to create a brand-new story and improve upon its initial concept, instead utilising it within most of its musical numbers which are clearly the focus of the film. Since there is no sense of narrative structure, plot development or even care to tell a story, it is very hard for the audience to actually care what is going on. The initial idea of the stage-play being a visualised human-like presentation of cat’s personality is not a terrible idea for a short film or a poem, but it does not work for a musical and especially not for a film. The atmosphere, pacing and especially the tone feel remarkably close to how the original stage show was delivered out to its audience, essentially providing a more feature-length version of the stage show with more cinematic angles. While that gives any casual viewers nothing but wild confusion and fear while viewing it, Cat fans (both for the musical and for the animals) will more than likely get what they want from the picture, that just leaves everybody else not understanding how or why at every corner.

It does not help that the given names for these characters are incredibly complicated and hard to pronounce, but it becomes equally as difficult when a majority of the characters are not even given real names. The characters themselves are different personality traits that come from cats, which is not a terrible concept and are easy way of giving character’s quick simple personalities, but without enough time or even effort put into why these characters do what they do, it leaves them feeling like quirks instead of established roles. The cast for the film is very similar in that regard; the roster for the film is surprisingly filled with top-quality actors that feel massively above this material and yet they feel tailored picked solely based around each actor established quirks; Rebel Wilson plays the fat lazy cat, Idris Elba is mysterious and slightly malicious, Ian McKellen is old and wise, Jason Derulo is crazy and a play boy, it all feels intentional and not in a good way. Thankfully this cast is good enough that none of the performance are technically terrible even by this film’s standard and even the singing from most of the cast aren’t terrible, but its hard to ignore the simple slight knowledgeable direction that they are handled, which makes it feel even more like an intentional bad movie as opposed to trying to be a real one. While people like Rebel Wilson and James Corden are pretty annoying and feel like they are just riffing their own material, people like Ian McKellen and especially Jennifer Hudson are at least trying to provide a decent performance with whatever little they have to work with.

The true horrors of this film come from the true horrors of its source material; humanistic cats are horrifying. People dressed in Cat make-up on stage is creepy enough but at least holds a physical enough element that does not distract people, this film has some truly disgusting effects that are incredibly fake as well as being unbelievably disturbing and ugly. These creations on-screen do nothing but disturb and unnerve, not helped out by the unnatural movements due to the terrible CG. It does not help that these creations feature humanistic eyes, hands, and even sometimes clothing, it makes them looking even more hideous. The locations are also uninteresting, mainly sticking to standard theatre and street locations, but the handling of the colors and lighting feel like an homage to the spot-light colors of traditional stage-shows, which at least gives the film a unique looking lighting scheme that makes it at least look distinct. The music was probably the element that people associated positive thoughts with the original stage play and thankfully none of the music is necessarily painful to listen through. Each song has a nice melody and feel distinct enough from the other that does not make them sound repetitive, but the lack of story means that they are simply them to be flashy and distract the audience from the lack thereof. The songs within the opening 30-40mins aren’t bad, but they’re harder to follow due to mumbled deliveries which makes them easy to ignore, whereas the second half of the film, the music actually got genuinely pleasant with a few numbers that not only sounded nice, but even some that were legitimately effective and memorable (mainly the one coming from Ian McKellen). While the singing is nice enough from mostly everybody, there’s a certain lack of strength behind a majority of the songs that makes the feel a little less booming and impactful as they would have been on stage (Memory is a nice number and sung pretty nicely, but feels slightly underplayed by comparison).

Cats was the joke movie of 2019; it was deemed a travesty by people who went to see and was downright despised by any critic that dared to venture into its depths. Turning a stage production into a movie is already pretty tricky, but doing it with a musical with no plot only makes the other noticeable awful things about the movie more apparent; the characters are pretty flat, the story has no sense of direction, the effects are terrible and lead to creations that are the stuff of nightmares (including human-faced mice and cockroaches). This movie is clearly terrible and deserves a majority of its hate, but the movie is so naïve and open about its obliviousness, that its hard to get naturally angry at it. The movie is more horrifyingly aimless as opposed to leaving any strong reactions. It’s certainly a movie that can be appreciated for how truly awful a lot of its choices are, yet at the same time, it isn’t surprising that a film version of Cats turned out like this or that people who get into the musical won’t feel the same way about this ‘’film’’. Definitely not worth a watch unless you’re a die hard fan or you really want nightmares, Cats is something that for the right reasons or not, will never be forgotten.