This film was my bad karma for slogging on Tom Hooper’s poorly edited, overlong, sloppily adapted Les Misérables since 2012. Cats is all of the problems of Les Mis but worse. The editing makes less sense. There is borderline no talking, and every single situation is sung (I understand this is a musical, but come on, Tom Hooper, musicals are allowed to have talking in them). I had an easier time understanding The Color of Pomegranates, Persona, and Inland Empire than this nonsense. So, a bunch of “jellicle” human mutant cats are aiming for the approval of one-Deuteronomy cat so they can ascend into the heavens above on a chandelier attached to a hot air balloon, and some of these cats have magical powers that turn them into Nightcrawler or something. Idris Elba cat really wants to get out of this movie, so he keeps vying to be the chosen cat by making other nominees disappear (kind of like Tom Hooper trying to score his way through Oscar season again. Not this time, old chum! Not with this crap!). Most of the film is based on cats singing about themselves; we don’t even get an introduction to the villainous Elba cat until there is half an hour left in the film. That’s like Darth Vader finally being talked about midway through The Return of the Jedi.

I haven’t seen Andrew Lloyd Weber’s production, or read T.S. Eliot’s original literature, but this is an absolute nightmare. The cats look like the terrible photoshop found on the cover of Animorphs novels (the mid-animal transitions), if not like living merkins. The editing makes so many scenes jarring and more unpleasant than they can possibly be (ruining tap dance solos, chorus lines, and more). No one seems like they want to be here (to be fair, neither did the audience). Cats is unintentionally hilarious when it’s meant to be moving. It’s also beyond weird. Why do cats even have magic? This is about cats. It’s like if I made a musical about iguanas that were able to read minds. Why does Rebel Wilson cat rip off her fur and have clothes underneath? Do these cats live in a human world, or a giant world with just them cats in there? Why does singing get them where they want to go? I feel like they may have been answers, but my piercing migraine didn’t ease up enough for me to retain any information. I don’t think there are enough substances in the world to make Hooper’s Cats delightful in any way. This was going to be a big fat 0 until we got to the big Jennifer Hudson final number; the only part of the film that works (I felt for Grizabella and wanted her to leave this film just as much as I did).

Outside of that, Cats is constant irritation, vomit-inducing visuals (in every respect), mostly atrocious songs (as someone unfamiliar with the original, were the songs meant to sound like this?) and the lack of any real plot delivery outside of never ending singing nonsense. I have rarely been this confused, angry, hysterical, and existential during a film meant to instil joy. I wish The Social Network won Best Picture like it was supposed to. It would have stopped the ripple effect of Tom Hooper’s punishing Cats film, since The King’s Speech wouldn’t have given Hooper the complete power to keep making substandard-to-decent works; he’s now reached completely terrible. Eyeballs and ears could have been spared. I can foresee so many careers in this film being changed, or even destroyed (if your name doesn’t rhyme with Wrench, Lift, or Backellen). If anything, these careers may end before the stinking film does. You mean to tell me that Universal Pictures is fighting for some patch to change how the cats look, and this is meant to save the film? There are way more problems than just that, folks. Bashing me in the head repeatedly with a sledgehammer wouldn’t improve this mess. I can’t even get that stinking “Magical Mr. Mistoffelees” song out of my head because it’s so repetitive. I’m forever cursed. Thanks, Hoop.

I give up. I don’t know what else to say, so here is an accurate, appropriately anthropomorphic depiction of my face the entire film. Good riddance.

Credit goes to Spongebob Squarepants: a show that now seems normal in comparison to this trash.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, and he still subjected himself to this god awful film. You couldn’t pay him enough to watch it ever again.