Let’s take a break for a moment from discussing what a racist pig Donald Trump is and discuss a cultural icon, Cats, which has had nine lives on Broadway. I saw it at the Schubert in Los Angeles so many years ago that I can’t remember, but it was a grand evening. I had terrific seats and all the lunging bodies, roiling, tumbling and leaping through the air made for a wondrous sight, not to mention the riveting musical score. I fell in love with Cats as I’ve been in love with cats my entire life. Years later I happened upon a televised version of the play. I was sitting with my pootie, Mischka, a Russian Blue gangsta, when the show came upon. I said, “Mischka, I wish you could appreciate a two dimensional representation of your species. There are hoomins on TV, dancing around, pretending to be cats.” This was the first warning of what the translation from stage to film was going to be like — not good. Not good at all.

Look, let’s just state the obvious right now, shall we? The feline species is more beautiful than we are and it is degraded by human eyes and God forbid, human teeth. This trailer is looking far more like a horror movie than a paeon to the feline. My initial take was that it was like The Fly, another unfortunate hybrid of the human and non-human, but at least that one was intended to be horror. This show got there on its own.

This particular clip brings back memories. Believe it or not, I was a theater major my first year in college. I recall an acting assignment where I was crawling on the floor, pretending to be a lion. I said to myself, “What the hell am I doing with my life?” and left the theater department forever a few months later.

When Planet Of The Apes was premiered back in the day, one studio exec famously whispered to another, “If they laugh when Edward G. Robinson comes on screen, we’re dead.” Nobody laughed and the rest is history. That’s because the apes are close enough to the human in appearance, that morphing hominidae pongo with homo sapiens is not a stretch. Morphing homo sapiens with felis domesticus, alas, is a bridge too far.

But the jury is out and will vote at the box office during the holiday season. Right now on Twitter 31K like the trailer, 41K dislike it. I’m in the latter category and won’t be making the journey to the movies, because I frankly doubt if I could sit through this and I’m certainly not shelling out the money. But the trailer did do something positive. It made me realize again how much I need another pootie. Mischka has since crossed the Rainbow Bridge but he still visits me in my dreams.

 

 

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1 COMMENT

    • That’s how it struck me. The actors all look grotesque. Frequently, what works as a stage play won’t translate to the screen. And the play was wonderful. Make no mistake about that. The orchestra and the dancers all cavorting and leaping. It was a memorable evening. The screen is a different medium, altogether. But, maybe this will be successful, who knows?

        • My impression is that it is a terrible trailer, trying to do too much, and as a result giving no impression – which translates to a bad impression – of the whole. But that’s just the impression it made on me. I’ve been wrong. If Ian McKellen is going to be Gus, I’d be interested to see that segment.

          • No one is a bigger fan of Ian McKellan or Judy Densch than I am. I just don’t want to watch them in this. Sometimes really good actors get caught up in bad vehicles. I’ve seen that countless times.

          • i’m at least as big a fan of both of them. This is definitely beneath them and I just can’t fathom why either on of them said OK to it.

    • I’ve got the original soundtrack and it’s wonderful. This is just too outre for me. But it might be good for people who have never seen the stage play.

  5. I’m for anything that gets trained dancers and singers in front of young people. Hopefully, it will be good enough to continue to inspire. My daughter performed this one season on less than good floors, was best up nightly.

    • Far be it from me to criticize the legitimate theater. My argument is that this material doesn’t seem to be making the transition from stage to film. I could be wrong. I’m just going with a gut reaction here.

        • You know, I went with my gut on this. What is fascinating, is that this video is so polarizing. There are people raving that they can’t wait and there are others of us ready to retch. it’s interesting how that is taking place. I wonder what the feeling will be at the end of the day and how well it goes at the box office?

  6. When I was a toddler they ran these TV commercials for a revivial tour or something, and it scared the bejeebus out of me. I’ve always been terrified of people in raggedy cat clothes bellowing Memory…very off-putting.

    I loved the film Six Degrees of Separation. Somebody PLEASE tell me they thought to give Stockard Channing a cameo in this movie!!

      • I watched the opening number from the original cast online. It’s so identifiably 80’s. How can a bunch of people dressed as cats look so 80’s? It’s like a thousand years from now a historian could open that clip and within three seconds say “Oh, that’s obviously 1983.”

        • Some shows do advertise the era in which they were made. What I found interesting about watching reruns of the original Star Trek is that the Spock and McCoy characters really made the show timeless. Otherwise, that show would have been a costume piece from the 60’s. That’s honest to god how it played out for me.

  7. WOW am I the only one? I saw the play in Denver maybe 30 years ago and loved it. I saw the trailer and will definitely see the movie, if for no other reason than to see James Cordon play Bustopher Jones in white spats. And Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella, Judy Dench as Old Deuteronomy, Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots… I thought the trailer looked like great fun.

    • You could be right. What I can say now, is that this is a polarizing movie. People love it or hate it. If you love it, by all means, go to the movie theater with my blessings. Maybe I’m the one with strange tastes.

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