Cats

Fantastic! The best musical and the best show of all times makes a magnificent film. It has advantage of showing everything in details and details are grand. Scenery, costumes and make-up are perfect. Music is superb (especially Jellicle Ball and Macavity). The best thing about the movie is certainly the cast. Actors not only sing and dance splendidly but also imitate feline movements and manners amazingly well. And how do they act! I absolutely adore Michael Gruber as manly and handsome Munkustrap. Elaine Paige as Grizabella would leave nobody indifferent. Veerle Casteleyn with her wonderful eyes is the most touching Jemima, John Partridge is irresistibly attractive and funny Rum Tum Tagger, Phyllida Crawley-Smith is very graceful Victoria, Jacob Brent is charming Mistoffelees, Aeva May and Rosmary Ford make a beautiful pair of adult cats: reserved Demeter and sensuous Bombalurina. Sir John Mills is a little unexpected guest star, but he is perfect Gus the Theatre Cat ("the star of the highest degree"). Eliote's text is witty, and there are a lot of amusing scenes in the show. My favourite ones are The Gumbie Cat, Mangojerry and Rumpleteaser, Pekes and the Pollicles, Scimbleshanks the Railway Cat. Watching this film is an endless joy for my family and me.

Since I first saw the musical, "Cats", in 1987, I have always wanted to see it on video. I was thrilled when it finally arrived. I immediately bought it.

The video performance was terrific: better than I expected. Instead of seeing it from the viewpoint of being in the audience, cameras were actually on stage, moving throughout the performers! The sound is terrific, and it played on my audio system wonderfully.

Of course, there is a flaw in the video. To me, it is actually a glaring flaw: a major segment of the musical, my favorite sequence in fact, is missing. Maybe it was cut for time, but I was very disappointed. "Growltugger's Last Stand" is one of the more elaborately staged portions of "Cats". For it to be removed from this performance will certainly upset many of the true fans of "Cats".

I was prepared to score a 10 out of 10 for this show, but with the editing, I can only score it a 7. Andrew Lloyd Webber himself produced this video. He should have left that portion in.

George

Something for all ages; my children (3 and 5) get a huge kick out of this, and have the lyrics memorized. Unlike some movie musicals (JC Superstar, A Chorus Line), it really doesn't try to adapt to "being" a movie, but settles for being (mostly) just filming folks on stage performing in a musical. Some of the movie-style cuts are, IMO, a bit disconcerting (Rum Tug Tugger to Grisabella's entrance, Theater Cat to Shimbleskanks), and I'm not familiar enough with the musical itself to know if the cuts are part of the original or were bad edits unique to the video itself. You do get any number of close-ups to admire the costuming and make-up, and the casting is superb. Enjoyable for audiences of all ages if you like musicals.

Veteran David Mallett, who directed many music videos for great artists such as Asia, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Phil Collins, David Bowie, Queen, Blondie, U2, AC/DC, The Who, Rod Stewart, Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Tina Turner, Madonna, Erasure, Rush, Roxy Music, etc., is doing a great job here, directing Andrew Lloyd Weber's wonderful music. An extraordinary distribution, excellent choreography, superlative costumes and makeup, everything superb. One of John Mills' latest films.

Please watch this version instead of the 2019 film version. This version is so much better and quite frankly features the best cast of Cats yet. If you can't find the dvd all the clips are available to watch on the Cats YouTube page.