Stan Ludwig

All those bad reviews of the movie CATS must have been written by people who hated the play, too. So why did you go? It’s a musical -- a GREAT musical with exceptional lyrics and scores as you would expect from ALW. The one new song by written by Taylor Swift and Andrew Loyd Webber was just as exceptional, and I was thrilled to hear it twice, the first time from a dancer who showed more emotion in her face than the whole Broadway cast combined, and the second from Taylor during the credits. For all the naysayers who said there is no plot, you weren’t listening. And there are plenty of plot summaries you could have read if you have hearing issues. In fact, there was a whole lot more back story detail in the movie than in the play that actually helped explain the plot for first-timers. Where this movie excels over the play is in the acting: the facial close-ups which are impossible to see in a Broadway performance added a whole new dimension to the plot. The newcomer Francesca Hayward, Jennifer Hudson and Judi Dench were phenomenal in this aspect. And Jennifer Hudson’s vocal performance was up to par with all those stars who preceded her in this role. All the other vocal and dance performances were quite entertaining with the exception of Judi Dench and Ian McKellen but what did you expect — they are NOT singers — they are stars in their own right. But you got a much better understanding of their characters than the stage actors could supply. They tried to give some of the stars more air time and I thought those numbers stretched on too long. Generally I did not see any CGI effects that bothered me too much, although a few things were a little less than perfect. The tap dance scene was clearly done on green screen and then dropped into numerous backgrounds and could use some technical improvements. The biggest disappointment was Judi Dench being cast as "Old Deuteronomy”. It’s always been a male with a good bass voice. Substituting a female for the role is not the issue, but it needed to be an actor who could do justice to the songs. I did not care that there was no fur on the characters’ hands as there is none in the Broadway show either, but rings and watches were inappropriate. Maybe the negative reviewers wanted it to to be more like the costumes in the play with longer fur, etc. but the movement of the tails, ears and faces more than made up for any costume shortcomings.