Every month or so, out of absolutely nowhere, my brain will just start shrieking at me:
SKIM-BLE-SHANKS THE RAIL-WAY CAAAAAT
THE CAAAT OF THE RAIL-WAY TRAAAAAAIN
This started long before my mom and I walked into an aggressively empty theater the day after Christmas, 2019, to watch CATS The Movie.
It’s been going on for years. I first saw CATS The Musical at age 4 or 5. And then three or four more times until the last time it came through my hometown when I was 19. I fucking love this musical.
Skimbleshanks is not my favorite song/cat, but its syncopated chorus is so darn fun to sing, and it bursts into the second act of the musical with such incongruous energy at exactly the right time to wake you up. It’s an earworm. Here you go. Scream it at a loved one when they least expect it.
Premise
So FIRST OF ALL, you can’t judge CATS The Movie for its basic premise, the music, or the weird lyrics. I’m sorry but that’s a non-starter. All of that came from the source material and if you didn’t like the musical or the poetry, you were never going to like the movie. It’s like going to see a Harry Potter movie and being like, “I don’t like how in the movie there were a bunch of children in constant danger and also they were wizards.” That’s not the movie’s fault, that’s the source material, Bud.
So I’m going to shelve the fact that the premise is weird, and the song lyrics are silly, and the cats’ names are truly bonkers. (Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo or Coricopat. Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum). You can talk to Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber and T.S. Eliot about that shit. Maybe a sung-through piece about the secret lives of cats and what if they could dance and what if some were super horny isn’t your bag. That’s fine, but you were never going to like that in movie form instead of a live musical so, shut your trap.
If, on the other hand, you first saw cats as a wee 8-year-old weirdo whose interests could be summed up as cats, her pet cats, the concept of cats, wild cats, choir, and magic, then HOLY FUCKING SHIT is this musical going to blow your tiny mind.
I mean.
She didn’t stand a chance.
So we’re shelving the premise and the music. The music is GREAT, by the way. If you disagree I’m sorry about how wrong you and your life are. The orchestration is big, the harmonies are multiple and complicated, there are moments when chords just hit you like an oversized shoe. It’s one of those magical musicals that transports you to another world, one where the room is abuzz just before the curtain opens, with normal human chatter and sounds, then the lights go off, the curtain parts, and BAM! You’re hit with those sneaky first notes from the pit and suddenly you realize YOU’RE WATCHING A MUSICAL BUSTER and then you’re crying and you don’t know why.
I always cry when a musical starts. Let’s not dissect it.
SKIM-BLE-SHANKS THE RAIL-WAY CAAAAAT
Sorry. What I meant to say was that a lot of the musical performances in the movie are great. And, incredibly, performed live during the filming. Just like LES MIS The Movie, director Tom Hooper had all the performers sing live during the shoot, rather than lip-sync to a backing track. It’s amazing and raw, and you can feel it especially, obviously, during Jennifer Hudson’s final performance of Memory. Lips quivering. Breaths taken for effect. Tears streaming down her face. God is her face wet for this whole movie. Just a moist lady, givin’ it her all.
Overall the acting was very good—which makes me all the more upset for the actors. They had no idea what it was going to look like. Clearly a lot of them were stoked to be in CATS, and had a deep connection to seeing the musical as a child. I am constantly in awe of actors who agree to take a risk on a project and put their performances and reputations in the hands of a director. The actors usually have no say in how the final thing turns out.
And the dancing? It’s great. I think. I think the dancing was great. It was hard to tell. The camera movements were often so weird and swoopy that it was hard to see the dancing, and the CGI of it all made you question whether the performers were actually doing these moves or maybe a computer programmed it all out.
Abject body horror
Because it is SO HARD to focus on the music or the dancing when your brain is trying to figure out what the actual fuck you’re looking at. Is it a cat? Is it a human? What monstrous feat of science or act of a vengeful God hast wrought this creature?
It’s like you took a cat and a human, put each through a paper shredder, grabbed a handful of whatever came out the other side, then pasted it back into a single entity. Top of head = cat, middle of head = human, neck = cat, chest = human and Jesus why do the female cats have human, nippleless boobs? There are also no teats on the tummy so I ask you, HOW do these creatures feed their young? Are they sterile? By God I hope so. The only alternative is that they lay eggs.
These are the kinds of horrible thought experiments one has to (HAS TO) embark upon to make any sense of what you’re looking at. It’s macabre.
Why, in the name of all that is holy, was the choice made to give these performers cat skin? I promise you, it would be 1000% better if they were wearing the wild 80s glam rock costumes from the musical. They’re ridiculous, especially in this economy, but at least they’re comprehensible. You can see the human inside, and you don’t have to ask questions like, “Why is the tail coming out of the mid-spine?”
Tom Hooper, release the un-CGI’ed edit. The one where dancer’s legs actually touch the ground and don’t kind of slip across it because the CGI didn’t render it correctly. The one where you don’t have collars floating weirdly in the air around furry necks because the CGI didn’t render it correctly. The one where Dame Judi Dench’s human hands and wedding ring are fine, because she’s just wearing a big fur coat and cheesy cat ears and I don’t have nightmares.
And by the way, that hand? I saw that hand. I saw MANY human hands. Any time a cat wore a coat over their fur (fur coats made of WHOM’S SKIN?), they had human hands. So if Dame Judi Dench’s hands were the only ones that were fixed after the studio sent an updated film to theaters, there are still a lot of hairless human hands to look out for.
Story changes
And now, if you’re still here for some in-depth story analysis: Some in-depth story analysis. I’m sure that’s what you came here for and so you’ll be happy to keep reading—
THE CAAAT OF THE RAIL-WAY TRAAAAAAIN
I’m fine with the way they added some kind of plot to the story, honestly. It’s kind of dumb that the cats have to perform a song to be chosen, America Idol-style, to be raptured up to heaven or a buddhist afterlife to be reborn. The original was just a loose collection of HEY LOOKIT THIS CAT so, fine.
Cat-by-cat breakdown
Anyone still here? Hardcore CATS fans? Just me? That’s ok. I just need to get a few more things off of my human chest. The kind that has boobs and nipples, in the appropriate places.
Victoria
The opening of the film is very sad and almost un-commented on—Victoria, tied up in bag, gets thrown out of a ritzy car into the alley. But CATS is very sad and dark at times so it’s not uncharacteristic. Victoria is not a large role in the musical, but Francesca Hayward is charming, and her eyes are so big and open that she works well as a stand-in for the audience with a general, pleasant, what-the-fuck-is-all-this expression.
Munkustrap
Who is this guy? I don’t remember this character at all but he’s in, like, all of it. He’s fine. He’s quite a good singer. And a really good dancer. Goddammit he’s kind of doing it for me. HELP I AM FALLING INTO THE SEXY ABYSSSSSS.
Jennyanydots
I really didn’t like this character or Rebel Wilson’s portrayal. They somehow made her grosser and strangely petty. In the musical, the joke is that she’s a big, lazy asshole that sleeps most of the time but, SURPRISE! At night she comes alive and dedicates herself to some admittedly weird hobbies. But boy can she tap.
In the film she’s just kind of fat and weird. She invites us into a matryoshka-like layer of body horror when she reveals the tiniest little human child-mouse hybrids and lines of human-cockroach hybrids, several of whom she eats mid-song. Oh. And then suddenly she UNZIPS HER CAT SKIN TO REVEAL A SHINY VEST OUTFIT OVER ANOTHER EXACTLY-THE SAME CAT SKIN.
I.
Ask.
You.
She does this twice.
Rum Tum Tugger
Upon exiting the theater, my mother said to me, and I quote, “I remember the Rum Tum Tugger as being sexier.”
When I was little I knew my mom liked Tugger because he was kind of an Elvis facsimile, and no one is a bigger Elvis fan than my mom. She was at his last performance in 1977 and never fully recovered from his passing.
But after watching clips from the CATS The Musical The Film (available on YouTube, but in very awkward short clips), I realized Tugger was originally more like Tim Curry doing an Elvis impersonation in 80s hair band drag. So. Still very up my mom’s alley.
But Jason Derulo does his own thing, much less Elvis and hardly any Tim Curry. So to my mom and the other folks with mom energy looking for their sexy Tugger: this one isn’t for you. It’s for a new generation who maybe don’t know that Tim Curry was once a sex icon and probably don’t know anything about Elvis. I’m very sorry for your loss.
Bustopher Jones
He has the funniest moments in the whole show. Ok yes, he does grub around in literal trash for quite awhile but it’s 2019 and who among us cannot say the same. He’s having a great time.
Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer
Did you know that there is only a 0.03% chance that a calico cat will be a male? These are the kinds of top-quality cat facts you came here for, right? These guys are male and female twins, so I’ll let it slide.
Anyway I don’t know why they changed the tune of their song but kept the lyrics the same.
Old Deuteronomy
The best casting in the world. Thank you. Old Deuteronomy is always a male role in the musical, so I love this gender swap. Unfortunately Dame Judi Dench said in an interview with Out magazine that because of this, her character is trans… yowza. See a much-more-qualified take on that whole situation at i09.
Side note: in general I really respect the attempt at diversity of the CAST. Not that you can see it but you can feel it. Because man is CATS The Musical The Film white.
Gus: The Theater Cat
A truly pathetic and heartbreaking character in the musical. How did they get Sir Ian McKellan in here? He’s one of the cats who wears clothes: a coat and a thin scarf and hang on—is that what he showed up to set in?
They cut out a lot of his part and it’s honestly a good decision. Sorry Gandalf but at least you got out fairly unscathed.
SKIMBLESHANKS THE RAILWAY CAT
Oh here he comes. Lookit this guy. A real cup of hot Irish coffee. A queer icon if you ask me. What do you call a guy who refuses to wear a shirt but keeps his handlebar mustache perfectly distinct from the rest of the fur on his face?
Fucking fabulous is what you call him.
Macavity
Oh God. This one is tough. I know we’ve had a lot of fun here but this is the one that broke me. He’s actually, sort of, fine when he’s wearing his big coat but near the end he appears sans coat for a big song and dance with Taylor Swift and somehow he’s The Most Naked of Them All. Probably because his fur is the shortest and shiniest and all one shade that’s a little bit close to his real skin color.
The foot.
I can’t with the foot.
In the musical he’s a fearsome legend that you barely ever see and the other cats are very scared of/horny for. When he finally shows up it’s actually terrifying according to me as a child (and others it seems). He has The Most Bodacious Hair and I’d frankly rather with this one.
Bombalurina
In many ways, Taylor Swift was the easiest to look at. Because she already kind of looks like a cat, right? But also she really shimmies those nippleless boobs and has such a strange hourglass shape and why oh why is she wearing high heels?
Taylor Swift wrote the only new song, Beautiful Ghosts, and it shows. It uses the same five words over and over and none of them are “ineffable”.
Mr. Mistoffelees
And we all say, oh well I never thought they’d ever do such a dirty to magical Mr. Mistoffelees. I understand, from a story perspective, why they made you timid and dorky and sort of put you in competition with Munkustrap for Victoria’s affections (even though in the musical you’re unapologetically and celebratorily flamboyant), and I like that you gained your confidence in the end and won over the hottest of the cats.
Buuuuuut you were my favorite cat in the musical and I miss the old you. You’re so fucking cool and suave and you actually save the day without saying a word. As someone who desperately craves all the attention in the room but doesn’t want to speak up to get it, I felt seen.
They’ve been singing about this asshole for 2 minutes before he even shows up. What an entrance. What a jacket. What an icon.
You know what? The more I think about it, the more I hate what the movie did to Mistoffelees. Shame on you.
Grisabella
In the movie they say that Grisabella made a bad decision to go off with Macavity and now she’s paying for it by being ugly. There’s a whiff of sex work about her character and the guilt they assign her that is not at all explicit and hopefully just in my head, but that’s the vibe I got.
In the musical, she was the most beautiful, glamorous cat until she got HIT BY A CAR. And now her life is shitty and it’s not her fault. She’s the most tragic and her song is so beautiful and you rejoice in her redemption and, yes, her death. IT WAS TIME, Grisabella.
Jennifer Hudson does a lovely job and if it weren’t for the fucking body horror maybe she’d be nominated for some awards. She’s also the only cat who walks on all fours drags her back legs behind her. Woof.
And thank the sweet baby Jesus that’s the last cat I’m going to talk about. I have to go lay down for an hour—A FULL HOUR—after all this.
And then I’ll come back to the real world by looking up these actors doing good work in their real skin. I’ll just watch JHud sing in human form and look up Robbie Fairchild dancing so good with his human muscles and forget this ever—
SKIM-BLE-SHANKS THE RAIL-WAY CAAAAAT
THE CAAAT OF THE RAIL-WAY TRAAAAAAIN
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