Much like Orpheus walked into the dark depths of Hades, I myself peered into
the fiery brimstone and ashen realm of Hell to find a movie so bad, so detestable, that it
makes everything else ever produced in this world look like The Godfather. A movie so
utterly terrible that even Michael Bay would cringe at the mere sight of it. I am, of
course, talking about A Talking Cat!?! By David DeCoteau.
Yes, I did not add those punctuation marks. The legitimate title of this movie is: A
Talking Cat!?! It seems even the film itself is confused to how anybody allowed it to be
produced.
This movie was created in 2013. Unsurprisingly, it was a Direct-To- DVD release.
That means that this abomination was not shown off in theaters, which is a relief, as the
poor children who watched it would have had their eyeballs burned to oblivion.
The only redeemable quality in this film is how laughably bad it is. It makes for
good entertainment if you just want to lie around, feel like absolute garbage, and riff a
children's movie about a talking cat who speaks with his lips MS- Painted on. No, really,
that's how the beast talks. His mouth is digitally painted black to represent an open
mouth, but instead resembles an unending void of chaos and despair, hoping to leech
away at this mortal coil.
Before we discuss the plot, let's talk about production. This movie had a budget
of one-million dollars. One. Million. Dollars. I can only assume that a hundred bucks
went into the actual movie, and the rest of the money went into all the crazy drugs they
used while creating this flick. You know what else had a budget of one million dollars?
Rocky. Rocky was a pretty good film. That proves that it was not the budget that
decided the quality of this movie. The reason A Talking Cat!?! is so bad is because Mr.
DeCoteau was probably too busy tripping to be worried about, oh, I don't know, how
good his film is!
But I digress. The film revolves around a
.wait for it
.talking cat. What a shock.
He is voiced by Eric Roberts. Do you know who that is? Neither do I. The gruff-voice for
the tiny cat is pretty surprising, but even more surprising then that is that Roberts spent
15 minutes recording dialogue for this film in his living room. Only 15 minutes. For a
professional voice actor, and the main character, that is not enough time.
The cat protagonist, named Duffy, is a magical talking cat. Okay. I can believe
that. But what I can't believe is that this talking is limited so that he can only speak to a
person once, and just once. What kind of a lame power is that? If you're only going to
have one line for each character in the movie (note: 6 characters in the movie) then why
call this movie A Talking Cat!?! if said talking cat barely even talks?
We get to see how the cat helps people with their problems. Specifically, a father
named Phil, played by Johnny Whitaker, who is like if that one scientist from Jurassic
Park became twice as eccentric and three times as obnoxious. Who are the other
characters, you ask? Who cares? They barely deserve any recognition. I looked up the
four other actors, and it says a lot that their most prominent work is A Talking Cat!?!
This movie is like a plague. If you are in any way involved in it, you've dug your own
grave.
Let's get into the conflict of the movie. Phil's son, WhatsHisFace, is mean to his
father. Why? I don't even know. The father, even though he decorates the inside of his
house with trees and weird statues, doesn't seem like a bad guy. So why's the son
hostile to him? To drive the plot. That's all this movie is. An awful talking cat and a
bunch of things that only exist to drive the plot.
The rest of the story is just nonsense. Half of it's not even story. At least a third of
the movie are establishing shots of forests and characters slowly walking up stairs or
empty hallways.
This movie makes me physically ill to watch. It's almost as if somebody crafted
this piece just to torture me for all of eternity. If you get to buy one DVD this year, don't
buy A Talking Cat!?! Wait, no. Better idea. Buy the DVD and then burn it. Burn it to the
ground. The satisfaction that you will get from destroying this film will be worth the
money.
