Hey 3.5 readers.
Cats. It’s one of, and some might even say, Broadway’s greatest musical. It’s two hours of performers dancing and singer in kitty costumes. The extremely loose plot is that the cats assemble in a junkyard once a year to introduce themselves and plead, through song, why Old Deuteronomy, the head cat, should pick them to ascend into cat heaven, where they will be reborn as a younger cat.
SPOILER ALERT – the most memorable (pun) song is “Memory” sung by Grizelda, who in her youth, was a very glamorous cat but when she became a famous cat, she forgot all the little cats and now, she’s old, washed up, somehow involved in cat prostitution, how that works I don’t know but whatever. At any rate, the plot, in addition to being about cats, is also how it sucks to get old and how your body breaks down and your poor health ruins your life and everyone starts to think you suck because you’re old and all you can think about is how happy you’d be if you could be young again.
OK. Aside from all that. CGI has done some miraculous things, but I don’t think it looks good here. Grafting the faces of real actors and actresses onto these CGI cats just looks dumb.
First, see the size. They’re as small as cats and the world is from a cat perspective, meaning regular household objects are bigger to them. So…ok on Broadway the only way you can have a dancing cat is to put a human in a cat costume, but for the movie why not have singing CGI four legged cats?
Or do one of those Air Buddies type things where you record the cats until they do the shit you want and then record some voiceover.
OK that would be stupid. Scratch that.
But here’s the big question. Why not just get these actors to appear in makeup? You know, there have been a number of sequels to the Wizard of Oz over the years, laden with CGI and yet for my money, nothing beats the 1930s original. Nothing beats those elaborate costumes and makeup jobs.
So, couldn’t we just make up the stars and let them prance?
Or, how about this? Just make an animated cartoon voiced by the stars. Disney makes new cartoon characters all the time. Why not animate some cats who walk and talk like humans and let the stars sing for them?
My guess is these are all such big names that they wanted their faces on the cats.
I don’t know. Something about the faces on the cats just looks cheap to me.
I’m sure I’ll go see it anyway though.
What say you 3.5?
PS – I love Jennifer Hudson, like for real, love her, but why is she playing an elderly cat? Just seems like more of Hollywood’s stance against the old. If the character is an old lady cat, depressed at what time has taken from her, then why is a young woman playing her? I mean, OK, she’ll belt that song out of the bark but still.
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