Ever since the first trailer of Cats, the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical dropped online, the internet, and perhaps the world in general, has been united in asking the following questions:
- What the hell is going on?
- Why is this happening?
- Is this the real life, is this just fantasy? Am I caught in the catslide, is there no escape to reality?
Okay, maybe not the last one.
So, when the ghastly body-horror ‘musical’ finally released recently, it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, met with savage, scathing yet hilarious reviews.
“Cats is the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs.” – Edward Douglas, The Beat.
“There is a thin line between idiocy and genius, and Cats pukes a hairball on it and rubs its ass all over it.” – SlashFilm
“To assess Cats as good or bad feels like the entirely wrong axis on which to see it. It is, with all affection, a monstrosity.” – Vulture
Alan over here is having a bit of an existential crisis.
“Cats is a fever dream, a hallucination, an approximation of what would happen if your third eye actually opened and you could suddenly see into the astral plane.” – Polygon
“Can you make a movie so bad that the Academy takes back your Best Director Oscar? Asking for Tom Hooper.” – Collider
“Once seen, the only realistic way to fix Cats would be to spay it, or simply pretend it never happened. Because it’s an all-time disaster – a rare and star-spangled calamity which will leave jaws littered across floors and agents unemployed.” – The Telegraph.
“A doctoral thesis could be written on how this misfire sputtered into existence.” – The New York Times
“There are enough disturbing scenes here to scar you for nine lives. It’s hard to decide which aspect of the film made me most uncomfortable, but there’s certainly no shortage of contenders.” – Radio Times
My absolute favourites, however, are the following two:
“I have seen sights no human should see.” – Alex Cranz, Gizmodo.
Alex clearly had a tough time at the cinemas.
“My eyes are burning. Oh God, my eyes.” – Ty Burr, The Boston Globe.
When the people who watch your movie are suddenly complaining about having eyesight, you know you’ve put out an absolute stinker.
In an unprecedented move, Universal, the studio that produced the movie, is sending theatres an ‘updated version’ of Cats, a movie Gizmodo called “The Ozymandias-like monument to hubris and toxoplasmosis.”
The changes are apparently going to improve the visual effects.
Too late, Universal, the cat’s already out of the bag.
Try the veal, I’m here all week.