In monthly column The A-to-Z of Trash, bad movie lover Eliza Janssen takes us on an alphabetically-ordered trip through the best bits of the worst films ever. A true Cats obsessive, she takes over from Old Deuteronomy and declares the actual winner of the film’s cultist death ritual.
Cats (2019)
‘Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the cinema house/Many creatures were stirring, perhaps hungry for a mouse. My awful little rhyme just now was superior to many of the lyrics in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s much-maligned, bamboozlingly-successful mega-musical Cats. And yet I was indeed motivated, on Boxing Day 2019, to drag my family members to see Tom Hooper’s disastrous big-screen adaptation of the show.
Because I thought it would be good? No, my child. Because I’m so smooth-brained, so irony-pilled, that I paid for Gold Class seats to what I knew would be a seminal experience for me as a fan of Hollywood failure. And fail it did, since the film was shit in all the ways countless sarcastic internet commenters have already tiresomely outlined. My favourite review concisely read: “Congratulations to dogs”.
In my toxoplasmosis-addled mind, however, Cats was also a disappointment because the wrong kitten was picked as The Jellicle Choice. Even if you’ve seen Cats on stage or on screen, you may be liable for compensation you may not remember that the entire film’s plot is (haphazardly) centred around a tribe of “Jellicle” cats (who can and do, do and can, etc) yearning to be elected by their group in a cult-like death ritual, which will allow them to shed their burdensome material existence and ascend to the Heaviside layer. Who would I choose, if I were Dame Judi Dench as the furry sect’s leader Old Deuteronomy? Let me explain, ranked from I’d-rather-eat-kitty-litter-than-see-them-win to most robbed.
Bustopher Jones
I think fucking not. This black-and-white puss, whose whole song is about how he is fat, instantly loses points for being depicted by overgrown theatre kid/loathed late night host James Corden, who was clearly asked to spice up Sir Lloyd Webber’s fatuous musical with “contemporary”, “weeeell that was awkward XD” asides. He will never see the Heaviside Layer.
Jennyanydots
Aussie comedian Rebel Wilson gets disqualified too, despite clearly putting her whole p*ssy (sorry) into playing kitchen tyrant Jennyanydots. There are simply too many shots of her splayed, genital-free crotch in her every scene. And her trademark song, about her lazy days of coercing mice and cockroaches into Busby Berkeley-esque dance numbers, features the film’s most ghoulish CGI atrocities. Next.
Mungojerrie and Rumpleteaser
I dunno if these two are siblings, lovers, or some twisted combination to which Jellicle law casts a blind eye. But there’s definitely some hormone-fuelled fanfiction about them somewhere on Wattpad. A pair of Irish-accented petty thieves, they’re clearly two characters that the filmmakers just gave in and cast actual, talented musical theatre performers to play. They are, to my mind, a tad too naughty and selfish to be allowed to escape the agony of material existence!
Macavity the Mystery Cat + Bombalurina
Idris Elba and Taylor Swift threaten the good Jellicle folk with their nudity and catnip-lacing shenanigans. He drops in and out of the story, thankfully abducting his competitors for the Jellice Choice before disappearing with an embarassing “meow!” into a puff of smoke. She clearly did like one or two days of choreo and then dipped, never to be seen again beyond her slinky appearance in Macavity’s villain song (despite writing a classic Tay-Tay ballad in order for the film to be eligible for a Best Original Song Oscar. LMAO nice try.). They both put on a good show that clearly hasn’t marred their careers too terribly.
Victoria the White Cat
Poor Royal Ballet dancer Francesca Hayward: at least her film debut was somewhat shrouded in identity-blocking CG fur. Victoria is our naive audience surrogate into the horny, uncanny world of the Jellicles, and in her debut appearance at the Jellicle Ball she does a nice job cheerleading folks like Grizabella and Mister Mistoffelees into showing their stuff. As a newcomer, she can’t win on her first crack, though: that’d be like if Timmy Chalamet beat the longtime-nommed, first-time-winner Gary Oldman back at the 2018 Oscars.
Old Deuteronomy
Judi Dench is genuinely a tonic in this cat-astrophe of a feature (ha ha ha it is a pun). Her singing is feeble, warm, unshowy; she seems oddly at home in the mess, despite later telling journalists both that her character is “trans” and that she hated how “mangy” she looked in the role. She described her swaggy coat as looking like “like five foxes fucking on [her] back”! Legend. Anyway, her cat should be rewarded with the sweet release of death sometime soon.
Asparagus the Theatre Cat
Sir Ian McKellen is a bit sad to watch as “Gus”, a cat who warbles that he was once a daunting, Vincent Price-esque ham. Did he perform for, like, other cats? Or bewildered humans? Gandalf looks like he’s having a fun enough time, and he doesn’t appear in the film that much…but one still comes away from a screening kinda wishing he could be quietly retired. From the cat-stage, and from this realm.
Grizabella The Glamour Cat
Here’s Jennifer Hudson, the underdog (undercat?), Cinderella-story winner of the 2019 Jellicle Ball. The one who gets to wail out the show’s eleventh-hour classic ballad “Memory”. Bizarrely coded as an abused sex worker cat who must claw her way back into the haughty Jellicle community’s acceptance, she gets a slut-shaming-to-noble-death ascension arc that is, in this writer’s mind, a bit hasty. Give her a few years of enjoying life in the in-crowd again before she gets shuffled off the mortal kitty coil.
Munkustrap
New York City Ballet dancer Robbie Fairchild plays this grey cat as a kind of mean twink, hanging off Old Deuteronomy like a theatre gay worshipping at the feet of a grand diva. He confidently lays out all kinds of Jellicle lore for us and newcomer Victoria; what each cat’s whole vibe is before they elaborate upon it themselves in lengthy song-and-dance numbers, why cats apparently have three names, yada yada yada. He seems to be a foundational member of the community and deserves a solid shot at getting merked.
Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat
This ginger cat races into the movie just when it’s at its most boring, tapdancing and crisply enunciating his daily duties as a small cat that is somehow also a trusted employee of a nearby railway line. He also gets a fucken hilarious exit from the entire film, when, during his song’s climactic pirouette, he just. Doesn’t. Stop. And instead spirals into the heavens, disappearing in Macavity’s cloud of sparkles. Like Christ Himself, Skimbleshanks offered us salvation; the least we can do is allow him to join his creator in the Heaviside Layer.
The Rum-Tum-Tugger
I’m darkly obsessed with Jason Derulo and this movie did not help matters, as the poppin-and-lockin’ Top 40 radio star gives a Cockney accent a real solid go in his electrifying number about how cats can be quite indecisive. As a cat owner, powerful lyrics such as “when you let me in, then I want to go out/I’m always on the wrong side of every door” hit home. Derulo is handsome, terrifyingly devoid of shame, and great at dancing. When Macavity claims to have vanquished the rest of the Jellicle competition, allowing him to cheat his way to the prize, I’m always like, “what about The Rum-Tum-Tugger? Let him have it.”
Magical Mister Mistoffelees
Robbed king!!! Robbed king!! Black-and-white magic cat Mistoffelees is the vindication of every simp in every bar who’s ever failed to use magic tricks to impress a girl. It’s his magic that brings back Old Deuteronomy from the clutches of the villainous Macavity. It’s his brain-meltingly repetitive song that’ll plaster the walls of your brain once the movie finally, mercifully, ends. Lemme just say that if I was at the Jellice Ball that night and saw Mistoffelees get done dirty by a corrupt, bigoted panel of cat judges, things would’ve gone down a little different. Because, even though the production’s scale is consistently confusing and upsetting, I would be at least like 5 times bigger than all of the cats. And they would come to know the flavour of my boot heel intimately.
Mistoffelees losing, Tay-Tay only dropping around for one quick mewl, and this film’s very existence are all upsetting facts to nestle within your mind. But I’ll leave you with one last devastating thought-crime: I did not have to Google any of the cat’s names in order to write this piece. May God have meow-cy on my soul.
