Let's Talk At Length About Why The New Cats Movie is a Terrible Idea

I was first introduced to Cats in my sixth grade music class.  Which, trust me, is the last thing you want to watch while in the same room as a herd of twelve-year-old boys.  People in strange wigs and skintight suits gyrating their hips and rubbing their heads against other people's crotches.  I was horrified and I wanted to go home.

In trying to convince myself how much I hated it, I found the film uploaded in segments to YouTube, and as it turns out, without the outside influence, I fell in love with it.

I fell in love hard.  The music, the costumes, simply how different it was from any other musical I had seen in my life, the characters and the actors' different interpretations of them, and the energy of the fellow devoted fans - all of it was and continues to be pure magic.

I'm sure most of you have at least heard of the phenomenon that is Cats, but you may not be as familiar with it as you think.  Despite popular belief, it does have a story.

Based on a book of poems by T.S. Eliot, it takes place on the night of the Jellicle Ball, at which the Jellicle leader Old Deuteronomy chooses one cat to "be reborn and come back to a different Jellicle life," which is considered a great honor.  Meanwhile, Grizabella - an old, fallen-from-grace cat - seeks affection from the others and tries to join in on the fun, but they reject her.  This leads her to singing "Memory," arguably the most famous song from the entire show.  After she sings her guts out, the other cats finally accept her and Old Deuteronomy selects her to be reborn.

The version I watched in my music class that served as my introduction to this show was a film released by The Really Useful Group in 1998 and directed by David Mallet.

Talk has been thrown around for a few years now that Tom Hooper (director of the 2012 Les Misérables film) wanted to make a big screen film version of Cats, but in early 2016 the rumors were officially confirmed.  Now it's almost 2019, filming has begun, and big names have come down like locusts in a Laura Ingalls Wilder book.  It will be produced by Working Title Films and distributed by Universal Pictures, Steven freaking Spielberg will serve as an executive producer, and then there's the cast...

This cast hurts me in the way that I love all of them and don't want to see them affiliated with this inevitable train wreck.

At the time of writing this, here is the cast as it appears on IMDb.

Ohhh, dear Lord, simply looking at this list makes me ill.

The fact that Macavity has higher billing than Grizabella or Deuteronomy gives me extreme pause.  While he may be the main antagonist of the show, Macavity is physically present for about a scene and a half max.  He shows up to kidnap Old Deuteronomy, fights Munkustrap and a couple other cats, and then disappears in a puff of smoke (quite literally).

I don't know how to explain why Judi Dench as Deuteronomy is a bad idea without sounding sexist.  What's more, Judi Dench was cast as Grizabella (as well as Jennyanydots) when the show premiered in London in 1981, but due to an injury she had to back out and was replaced by Elaine Paige, who would go on to reprise the role in the 1998 film.  So clearly, bringing Dench on as Grizabella would have been a far more satisfying decision.

Ian McKellen as Gus the Theatre Cat is the only one I can see actually working.  He gave an impromptu sample of his lines on The Graham Norton Show and my heart swelled with tenderness, though he immediately showed he seems to be taking the whole thing with a grain of salt.

Jennifer Hudson is another one that I can almost see, except for the perpetuating of the "young Grizabellas" trend that's been rolling ever since Nicole Scherzinger (seen above) was cast in the London revival in 2014.  I think half of the appeal and heartbreak of Grizabella's character is that she is traditionally portrayed by an older actress and you can tell that she's no longer in "the prime of her life."  When she's portrayed younger, it cheapens her.  Like, "Yeah, we know you only came to hear me sing the song, so hold onto the rafters, kiddos."

Taylor Swift as Bombalurina (the character known for her voluptuous qualities) feels like they just picked two names out of a hat, and Jason Derulo...I'm not even touching that because Rum Tum Tugger is my favorite character out of the whole show and I hold him to very high standards on a regular basis.  I can only pray that they don't try to bring Street Cat Tugger back from the dead, since they seem to be taking a lot of inspiration from the recent revivals.

(Aaand now that video is in my YouTube history.  It burns.)

There's also the fact that Cats is an extremely dance-heavy show - jazz, ballet, tap, the works - and most of these celebrities are not exactly known for their dancing.

Now all of that said, let me go on record to say that I am not opposed to the idea of a new Cats film in general.  As much as I love the 1998 version, they did take a sprinkle of liberties and I would like to see something closer to the traditional stage version on film.  However, that is clearly not what Hooper is trying to do here.

The most important element of Cats - moreso than in any other musical, I will argue - is immersion.  This is a landscape that takes place between real life and fantasy, not quite one or the other.  And to make that work, you have to believe that these characters are real even though they look very little like anything you've ever seen before.  Star power is only going to distract from that, especially in a film version where the audience is going to be up close and personal with the actors as opposed to the minimum distance a theater provides.  We won't be thinking, "Wow!  Macavity is so terrifying yet graceful at the same time!"  We'll be thinking, "Wow!  That's Idris Elba in cat makeup!"

Fortunately, not everyone on this list is a household name.  We have some proper theater people attached to this project, and while that does give me a little bit of hope, it doesn't take away the fact that the production team is giving the most attention to the actors that have the most star power.  We've heard nothing about the music.  We've seen no photos from the set.

This film is already a Frankensteined cash cow with very little soul from the production on which it's based.  And I have a feeling it's only going to get worse from here on out.