Zachary Confer

I enjoyed it start to finish. I found the characters and stages absolutely beautiful, although some of the stages were oversized for making the cast look cat sized. It's also clearly designed to appeal to children, so I have to let the cat puns and nut shot (poor puss in spats) slide. There's not enough out of song dialogue for that to really be a bother. I normally never find musicals entertaining, but I was interested every scene to learn about the fun characters being introduced. What kept me interested was how well actual cat's personalities are captured in these characters, but that's more a compliment to the original production than this movie. There are a few things I would have done a lot differently, like the cats never really throw claws like they should, and but as far as what all the reviews are saying, that this is "cringeworthy, nightmarish and ugly", this blows my mind. I don't understand the mind of a person who doesn't find this visually beautiful. As far as being "plotless", all I can say on that is it has no less plot than any other standalone musical. The cat like movements on the part of the actors are difficult and impressive, but are reduced to a gimmick in the eyes of the critics. I feel like people are unfamiliar with the appearance of these characters and that causes them to get "creeped out" by them, causing the reviewers en masse to hate the film before they reviewed it. Now there's a stigma in place because every famous reviewer tore the movie up (vaguely and lazily in my opinion), that you have to give a negative review as well, otherwise you'll be the only critic who liked Cats, which is bad for your career. Ultimately, I say that if you find the movie visually appealing, you'll love it. If you find them creepy, you'll hate it. Please give it a chance if you were considering it. Thank you.