I hate everything…

I don’t know what happened to my life that I found myself picking up Cats on DVD at Redbox

If you look through this website you’ll know that I am no stranger to bad movies. I’ve suffered through unfunny comedies, convoluted mysteries, lazy and uninspired superhero films, trashy horror movies, romantic comedies written by people with no understanding of human relationships, and more. Cats is the first movie that has utterly terrified me from minute number one.

Cats is roughly 110 minutes and it feels like great practice for when I have a debilitating stroke and lose all touch with reality. Five minutes into the film and I’m convinced that I’ve gone completely insane. Cats starts out with a song about jellicle cats doing jellicle things at the jellicle ball under the jellicle moon and how jellicles are and jellicles do because jellicles do and jellicles are. Jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle.

Jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle jellicle.

As far as I can understand from the threadbare plot, the jellicle cats are at the jellicle ball under the jellicle moon so that they can do their jellicle song and jellicle dance and jellicle Old Deuteronomy played by jellicle Dame Judi Dench can jellicle choose them to be jellicle sent to their jellicle death and be jellicle reborn with a new jellicle life. None of that makes sense but I’ve started cutting after this movie and the loss of blood is making me not care.

The characters are talking and I can recognize that they’re speaking English but the songs are absolutely meaningless and complete gibberish. It’s like that meme where people run songs through Chinese translation five times and then back to English and perform them again.

Most of the songs are just characters introducing themselves as the other cats look on and sing along. I guess the only plot progression is that the bad guy Maccavity played by Idris Elba wants to be the jellicle chat sentenced to death but Judi Dench won’t let him. He kidnaps the jellicle cats over the course of the film. Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson) is an outcast cat who everyone hates because she was one of Maccavity’s lackeys at one point.

It’s hard to pinpoint what the most unsettling part of this film is from the roaches with people faces that Rebel Wilson eats alive, the rats with child faces, the cats themselves and how they fit into the sets, the oddly sexual dancing, that they drown one of the cats, Rebel Wilson on her back with her legs out scratching hard at her own crotch, or just the fact that this is all an America’s Got Talent where the grand prize is death. Maybe it’s the part where Maccavity’s lackeys drug the cast with catnip.

Judi Dench breaks the fourth wall at the end and locks eyes with the camera to sing about how cats are not dogs.

Cats is disturbing and it only gets creepier the more you look at the effects and the number of mistakes that are made (don’t stare at the character’s feet!). The plot feels like a brain seizure and the pacing is like distilling bad LSD into a shot glass and using it as a chaser to complement a concussion.

The mystery of Cats is that hundreds if not thousands of people were involved in the production of this film and yet at no point did anyone with power give serious consideration to the question “are we making a huge mistake?” It’s an expensive film by talented creators and staffed with talented actors who all came together to produce the biggest shart of 2019. Taylor Swift went to cat school for this.

Rating: F—