Logan’s Cat Run

A figure writhes in a burlap sack, abandoned by a giant in the middle of an empty alleyway.

This is not Audition. It is something much, much more disturbing.

By this point in time, you’ve probably already read an awful lot about the bizarre realm of hell that is the Cats movie. No, not Cats: The Movie!

Though seriously: if you’re part of the 99.8% of humankind that has not witnessed the 69 minute near-home movie featuring the voices of Michelle Rodriguez and Jeremy Piven, are you really living?

Anyhoo, the opening shot of Cats did indeed make me think of Audition.

And I looked up to the gods and I sang, give me more.

I knew what I was getting into. You don’t look at the internet the week of Christmas 2019 without seeing the headlines. “A Cat-Astrophe!” “Empty the Litterbox!” “Cats Is a Dog” “JUDI DENCH HAS HUMAN HANDS!”

Sure, by the time you’re reading this, your cinema might have the “improved” print, wherein some visual effects were updated a full 10 days after the film’s initial release. Yes, the ever-so-human fingertips were certainly problematic in Cats, but the real, deeper issue came down to the very design. Why even HAVE human hand shapes when fingers are one of the key elements that separates us FROM cats?

Two minutes into Cats, it becomes very, very clear that nobody on the design team of Cats ever actually looked at a real cat. 

You know how Barbie dolls don’t in any way work as examples of human anatomy? Their heads are too large, their legs too long, their pointed feet too tiny to support such long legs and large heads?

Invert all of that and you essentially have the cats of Cats. What they still have in common with Barbie and Ken? Nipple-less breasts and no genitalia.

And yet, AND YET I SAY, will it shock you to hear just how many times Tom Hooper makes a point of having a crotch shot or groin injury?

In fairness, the one set of children in the otherwise drunken adult crowd I saw the film with on a Saturday afternoon seemed to REALLY like it anytime a cat received a groin injury, so there’s that. 

For the rest of the heavily intoxicated audience, Cats packed plenty of alternative entertainment value. The collective gasping at the mustached Shimbleshanks’s wardrobe reveal, a Village People-esque trouser set with sexy suspenders and no shirt! 

The group’s caterwauls when Mr. Mistoffolees’s catchy tune was interrupted by lingering shots on his extremely human fingers! 

The sudden shouts of horror because just when we had finally let our guards down to enjoy some simple tap dancing, the film reminded us that it had found a way to summon H.P. Lovecraft with its human-faced miniature CGI dancing rats.

There is something truly grand about the ambitions of Cats. Long in development hell and expected to be an animated film, this version GOES for it in a way few movies these days do. 

Did it tell its actors?

Watching Cats, I was reminded of the tragedy of Rent: (Not) Live!, wherein a dress rehearsal was used for the final product due to a cast member’s last minute injury. It felt incredibly unfair to its actors, who performed a rehearsal to check their marks, saving their voices with no clue that their practice would air in front of millions.

My point is, did Idris Elba KNOW this is what his Macavity would look like?

Was Taylor Swift shown any kind of rendering of her distractingly large, presumably useless yet very prominent feline breasts?

Did Rebel Wilson see even an early drawing of the CGI kicklining cockroaches she would have to eat on camera? 

Fresh off his public speaking up for the overweight community after Bill Maher’s pointed insults, was James Corden informed that his song—which boils down to four minutes of fat jokes—would play right after Rebel Wilson’s number…which is also visually reduced to four minutes of fat jokes?

And, for some reason, Rebel Wilson stripping off her cat suit to reveal an Esther Williams style…cat suit, a visual gag that gets reused identically an hour later.

By the time Taylor Swift showed up as a naked cat in high heels, sprinkling magical catnip on the quivering feline horde, I was two bourbons deep and could no longer deny the oddest cinematic connection I didn’t see coming this year.

The fine folks at the Alamo Drafthouse already did a great job of showing the parallels between Cats and Logan’s Run, but seriously: substitute LSD-spiked sangria for Swiftian glitter, and Gaspar Noe’s Climax is pretty much Cats in French. The body count is a little higher, but considering the crux of Cats’ plot is Judi Dench choosing one cat to die and fly to heaven on a chandelier hot air ballon, are they so different?

One could make a dozen drinking games out of Cats, all of which would leave its participants, well, ascending to cat heaven on a chandelier hot air balloon. Drink every time you think the cats are going to kiss, but instead stop to perform more snake-like nuzzling movements. Drink when you finally believe you understand the scaling of cats to their surroundings, only to immediately have that undone when a fork that was once the size OF a cat is now dainty enough to fit in her paw hand. 

Drink whenever the human actors are finally in a human acting zone that lets you suspend your constant confusion at what you’re watching, only for said human actor to suddenly perform a cat action so first-day-of-acting-class-exercise that you spit out your popcorn (the otherwise quite good Ian McKellen and his random lick-water-from-bowl motions is especially guilty here). When your eyes just can’t move away from the horrors of human feet with mild CGI cat fur, when they dart away and land on Jennifer Hudson’s Halloween manicure, when a line of spoken dialog hits and it, without fail, includes the tritest cat pun your kindergarten teacher once made…

Accept it. You are drunk. You are dead. Judi Dench is INDEED speaking directly to you, her eyes aimed right at the camera for her final monologue summarizing everything and nothing, “a cat…is not a dog,” she declares, and you’re tempted to ding your empty glass with a knife or shimmy your cat shoulders in agreement. 

It is the only thing that makes any sense in this cruel, genital-less world. 

Cats. Now...and forever

Cats: The Movie (no really: that's the title)

The term ‘crazy cat lady’ gets thrown around a lot in this day and age. As mother to two feline furballs who impose themselves on virtually every aspect of my life—

Oh look! Here’s a picture!

What was I talking about?

Right. See, I myself have been known to accept such a title. Perhaps it’s Joplin’s comfort with sitting on my shoulder…

Or Mookie’s enjoyment of being spanked…

Or the fact that I say these things in public with no consideration that some people find it, well, inappropriate.

Nevertheless, the beauty of something like Cats: The Movie is that, when watched with the director/producer commentary, I suddenly feel normal. Yes, I may take my showers as Mookie sits loyally on the bath ledge or have complete back and forth conversations with the chatty alarm clock also known as Joplin every morning, but at least I’M not the one spending 7 years of my life recording my kids’ antics and editing it into a 69 minute full-length feature youtube video with a story arc.

Mostly because Mookie speaks a hybrid of broken American English with a North Korean accent and despite being cute as a black and white button, Joplin is horribly unphotogenic and would look awful on camera.

They’re just not ready. Yet…

Quick Plot: Marchello is an indoor cat whose mother is the definition of a crazy cat lady, overearnestly voiced by Lolita’s Domonique Swain. See, when Mom spends the night at her boyfriend’s—apparently the first time this has ever happened—and later LEAVES HER CAT A MESSAGE ON THE ANSWERING MACHINE that she’ll be delayed another day, Marchello goes into a bit of a, dare I say it, tailspin, sneaking outside to explore the street life. 

It’s a CAT-astrophe!

Get it? Because cat—

Sorry. 

And what does our four legged friend find in the wilderness of wealthy suburbia? A sexy neighbor cat named Jujube, voiced by none other than Michelle Rodriquez. Like every character ever played by Michelle Rodriguez, Jujube messes everything up when she teases Marchello into traveling too far away from home. Now our hero must face territorial crows, manic depressive abandoned cats, drunken bullfrogs, overenthusiastic dogs, and a seedy rollerblader who makes a living by grabbing stray pets and ransoming them to their rich owners.

All of the abovementioned action is filmed guerilla style with a handheld, sometimes fingerprint spotted lensed camera. It’s like Milo & Otis with weaker production values or an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos with, well, equal production values and the voice of Jeremy Piven.

It’s hard to knock Cats: The Movie when it was essentially a hobby for painter-turned-cinematographer-turned-auteur Susan Emerson. Listening to the commentary track of her and producer Paul Williams (no, not that one) shows that Emerson wasn’t aiming to make Citizen Kat. She simply discovered her pet main coon was a natural in front of the camera and if she organized things a little bit, she could have a feature film. From one crazy cat lady to another, I have to sort of salute this effort.

But also, you know…it’s Cats: The Movie. I imagine its appeal lies in kids bored with Baby Einstein or nice old ladies with eternal supplies of hard candy. Also, Joplin seemed to really like it:

Although not as much as she did Sharon Stone in Scissors.

The little darling could not take her green eyes off Steve Railsback

Lessons Learned
Squirrels make shitty messengers, even if they are voiced by Jeremy Sisto

Crows are assholes

Culled from the commentary: a D.O.P. is a director of photography (as explained to the film’s producer)

Standard Animals Doing Human Stuff Trope Tally
New Kid In Town: Check 
Recent Dead or Divorced Parent: X
Montage: X
New Friendship: Check
Potentially Inappropriate ‘Friendship’ Between Child & Unrelated Adult (Human): Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check Check
Evil Corporate Enemy: X. A rollerblading catnapping con artist seems to be working independently
Original Song: X
Bully Comeuppance: X
Small Town Values: X. This is pure suburbia. There is nothing to compare it to
Back To Nature Moral: Check. The movie ends with Marchello’s mother randomly deciding he can be an indoor/outdoor cat, which is apparently the way nature intended (earmuffs Mookie & Joplin!)
Overall Score: 4 + Infinity/10

A-Paws-Meter
The main reason to rent Cats: The Movie is to watch the first 59 minutes with commentary (because for whatever reason, it just stops at that point). Here you get such adorable nuggets as the producer asking if the disc is skipping and my favorite opening discussion of all time:

Producer: So how did you get Marchello to chase the ball like that?
Writer/Director: I threw it.

Throw in a connection to Sunset Boulevard (it happens) and what more do you need?

A monkey. Yes, a monkey would have been good…