Tatiana Senechal

Rating the Cats movie so many years after it actually came out seems ridiculous, but it recently came out on Netflix. Based on the critics response to it, I didn’t want to go out and pay to watch it, but I knew that there were a lot of great actors in it and that as a huge fan of the PBS stage version I would eventually have to watch it. The acting in itself is fantastic because the actors are the cream of the cream. The CGI movements of the ears and tails are incredible. I think the problem with this is that we are dealing with something brand new that nobody has seen before. When werewolves came out in movies, for example, nobody knew what that was supposed to look like and they did a lot of hide and seek in the initial part of the movie and when the final reveal happened it was shocking, but it was supposed to be shocking. Cats is not a horror flick. It is a musical. There is no reveal at the end so the creature feature aspect of it is happening from the beginning. Imagine if the alien was the first thing you saw in the Alien movies. You’d be like, that’s not what an alien is supposed to look and behave like. That said, I love all the back story in the movie. Could the dancing have been better, more over the top? Sure, I think so. But, I feel like that is the trade off, better acting in exchange for athletic dancing. Still, the dancing is fantastic too. I think we were expecting Chicago and Cats is not Chicago, and I feel like we need to realize that and judges it for what it is: a one of a kind movie in a brand new genre all its own. As such I judge it pretty darn good.