And that contributes to the overall disjointed, confusing effect Cats leaves us with. But Hooper’s film far too frequently disconnects its audience from its musical score by making choices that undercut or distract from what the music is doing. This is a crucial point of objection, because Cats is primarily about the music and not much else. His staging misses key opportunities to bring the onscreen action in line with our expectations and especially with the music. It’s got its share of tongue-in-cheek levity, my particular favorite being the moment Judi Dench’s Old Deuteronomy solemnly instructs us, the audience, to address our cats thusly: “O, Cat.” One musical sequence in particular came really close, for me, to capturing Cats’ effervescent whimsy.īut Hooper makes baffling directorial decisions at every turn. The music is essentially unchanged, and I happen to like the new song. The dancing is wonderful - when the camera manages to sit still long enough to showcase it. The set looks terrific, even though the scale is nonsensically inconsistent. But I found it promising that Hooper was already a big Cats fan plus, he had the assistance of Hamilton choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, who also choreographed the recent Cats revival on Broadway, as well as Lloyd Webber himself. As a fan of the stage musical’s mix of spectacle and compelling human drama, I also felt like he obliterated most of the musical’s emotional and scenic appeal. His previous musical adaptation, 2012’s Les Misérables, was Oscar-nominated but also critically lambasted thanks to Hooper’s frequent misuse of fundamental filmmaking techniques, like close-ups and camera angles. Eliot - and despite the public’s generally baffled reaction to this movie’s existence, Cats had the potential to be joyous and light.īut it also had the potential to be a giant embarrassment, and I was wary that Cats wouldn’t be able to overcome either its own inherent quirkiness or the penchant of its director, Tom Hooper, to obliterate any emotional ebb and flow in his films and ratchet the pathos up to 11 at all times. But there’s a vibrant, fun spark that runs through the musical’s threadbare plot - after all, it’s based on a book of children’s poems by T.S. I’ve written a lot this year about how weird Cats is, and believe me, Cats, a story in which lots of cats introduce themselves and then one of them goes to cat heaven, is inherently weird.
Skimbleshanks the railway cat time signature movie#
In an alternate universe, the new movie adaptation of Cats, the long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber dance musical about cats, could have been a glorious holiday gift to the world.
0 kommentar(er)
