Tags

,

(For Day 26 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was for a poem showcasing alliteration, consonance, and assonance, some of my favorite poetic devices.)

The cats are out, the cats are out,
So stow your salmon, hide your trout.
They’ve come to call and cull the crowd
And find the one whom fate endowed.

Heading from their humans’ homes,
Crawling in the catacombs,
Fleeing from the fountain sprays,
Dallying in the alleyways,
Gamboling upon the ledge,
Reveling the razor’s edge,
Clawing at the curtain rods,
Ravaging like greedy gods,
Gobbling their food in mobs
While passing off as polished snobs,
Swinging at the hanging string,
Confident in claws that cling,
Swishing their capricious tails,
Romping on the risky rails,
Sniffing, licking, and nitpicking,
Quick to treats as well as tricking,
Now they come in coats of fur,
Here a hiss and there a purr.

In case there still is any doubt,
The cats are out, the cats are out.
__________________________

MPA rating:  PG

As many know, I am an ardent fan of movie musicals, so a part of me felt that 2019’s film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber show Cats couldn’t really be as bad as everyone said. Surely it was just some Internet haters latching onto some detail, like the eyes complaint from Alita: Battle Angel, which never bothered me. Yet as much as I wanted to find redeeming value in Cats, there’s not much that even I could extract. Truth be told, it really is as awful as people say.

I’ll preface this by saying I was never a big fan of the original stage version of Cats either. I applaud Webber’s talents, as well as the risk of adapting T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, full of many a charming and lyrical poem. Yet the result of that adaptation was a near-plotless story of various cats preening their particular talents in the hopes of earning reincarnation. It relies heavily on dance, and only ever touches the emotions with the iconic song “Memory,” sung by the outcast Grizabella (played here by Jennifer Hudson), leaving the rest of the songs to be intermittently fun or clever but rarely involving.

So the stage show had its own issues that make me wonder how it managed to stay on Broadway for eighteen years. The film does nothing to remedy those issues and instead adds even more, from strange scaling of the set and props to disturbing CG creations (I didn’t mind the human-cat hybrids themselves, but the human-mice and human-cockroaches were a step too far) to bafflingly poor casting and humor, particularly James Corden and Rebel Wilson (who even eats some of the aforementioned human-cockroaches). It’s especially astounding how many talented performers are featured here, including Hudson, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Idris Elba, and even Taylor Swift, all performing songs that range from decent to cringe-inducing and making me wonder at what point did they realize this was a bad idea.

So yes, Cats the movie is an utter mess, though I will grant it is not without some bright spots. A few songs are quite fun, like “Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat” with Steven McRae, while the new song for the movie, “Beautiful Ghosts,” was rather pretty. And I honestly feel sorry for Francesca Hayward in the lead role of Victoria, since she likely thought this could be her big break and could have done better with better material. Surprisingly, my VC disagreed with me and largely enjoyed the film, so perhaps there’s room for non-ironic fans out there. There are far better Webber musicals out there, so I’ll just watch Evita and pet my own cat instead.

Rank:  Dishonorable Mention

© 2024 S.G. Liput
795 Followers and Counting