By: Sophia Penelope Hill

If you have spoken to me in the last six months, for more than 10 minutes, then I probably brought up what is no doubt to be considered an American classic: CATS. When that trailer dropped, I simply…SIMPLY could not get enough. It was everything I had ever hoped for in a movie: Judy Dench in a massive fur coat, glitter everywhere, the city of London (or I think that’s where this was set), and of course Taylor Swift. I love Taylor Swift, so sue me… did you hear that song Lover!? And on Christmas day the reviews started rolling in, and MY GOD what a present that was for me! People went in with their knives and RIPPED THIS MOVIE APART! One person said this movie made them “never want them to have sex again”… that’s terrible. That’s what we in the business call “INCREDIBLY INCREDIBLY LOW PRAISE.” But still I was hopeful.

Let’s now take a small journey to 2010, when the phones flipped and Oprah still jumped on couches. I was a child star, in my local musical theatre troupe, where we did a combination of all Andrew Lloyd Webber’s songs called something like: “The Magic of Andrew Lloyd Weber” or “Only the Best Parts of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Most Dramatic Songs” or “100 Tweens Try to Sing Thirty Seconds of A Handful of Andrew Lloyd Weber Songs Before Their Parents Fall Asleep.” It was definitely something like that! In it, I played a “Jellicle” cat; none-descript and without a name. Just one of the “pack”…but the equivalent for cats. In this play, we did a few songs from the musical CATS, making me familiar with the music and haunting storyline. Being a cat onstage at 12 is an amazing time, I must say. Not for the audience, but for sure for the actors. At the end, instead of the audience clapping, we gave them a standing ovation for watching us perform at the “Jellicle Ball” for three hours on a weeknight. Kids man… can’t live with them…

Cut back to modern times, I realized my history with CATS had given me a key to the insanity. I knew what I was getting myself into, unlike a lot of the other unsuspecting spectators. My whole take, previous to seeing it, was the fact that CATS was WEIRD! Everyone was saying “This is so weird, it doesn’t make sense!” and my point of view was “Of course it doesn’t make sense, that’s the whole f*$king point!!” I got pretty heated about it. You can’t normalize this musical, it’s insanity is what makes it sane. For those who are unfamiliar, the plot line basically follows different cats performing to go to “Heaviside-Layer” where they can be reborn as new. A play off of the nine lives troupe, but still very confusing. That being said, I didn’t know what my mind, body, and soul were going to be subjected too once I stepped into the theatre.

I think I probably saw CATS how the rest of America saw CATS: in a theatre that could easily seat 500 people but was literally completely empty. NOT A SOUL YOU GUYS! NOT A SOUL! IN SIGHT! So naturally me and my two friends, Amelia and Sreya, snuck in three bottles of wine in paper bags…which proved to be the only thing that got us through. The film began and so did the end of my hopes for this being a good movie. Guys, it was so weird and bad. Like truly I did not even know what I was seeing.

First of all, it was so much singing about what made you a “Jellicle Cat” vs what didn’t make you a “Jellicle Cat.” The whole movie was like a Venn Diagram of that whole concept. Then some people danced very sexually, and also Edris Alba was there as “Macavity.” Who everyone was scared of? Then there was a 15-minute dance interlude that had nothing to do with anything… and then someone did some magic. Sir Ian McKellen lived in an old theatre alone, but also had a thing with Judy Dench who they called “Old Duet”? James Corden literally jumped into an on-fire trash can. Ok then Taylor Swift sang and honestly that was a manageable performance. Then Jennifer Hudson took a hot air-balloon to nowhere…. Then the credits rolled. Fin.

Amelia, Sreya, and I hopelessly tried to put a plot together… we literally could not do it. I even fell asleep at the end. I wasn’t strong enough to make it through. Sreya suggested that they should have used dictionary.com to define some of these terms on-screen so we knew what the f these cats were talking about. And Amelia actually had the valid criticism, that they should have used the techniques of film like flashbacks to make the scenes more engaging. But honestly that would not have saved this. I felt like Tyra Banks screaming at Tiffany on America’s Next Top Model… I really was rooting for you, CATS. The only plus side was seeing Ricky Gervais use this movie to fuel his anger-filled rant at the Golden Globes. Otherwise, this film truly let me down. I guess it didn’t “wanna be on top”…

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