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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsThe Boston Globe movie reviewer really, really hated the Cats movie
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2019/12/18/arts/claws-out/?s_campaign=breakingnews:newsletterNightWatcher
(39,343 posts)terrors.
That was harsh but accurate sounding from the description of floating faces CGI'd onto the furry bodies.
Dem2theMax
(9,653 posts)(Geez, I hate admitting that to myself.)
Anyway, I'm still afraid of the flying monkeys!
They freaked me out a good 50+ years ago, and I still cringe when I see them today.
Skittles
(153,182 posts)Tipperary
(6,930 posts)I would have liked to read that.
hlthe2b
(102,343 posts)Damn. Even the abysmal WSJ, lets you see a paragraph when you hit the link and I always thought it had the worst paywall.
Donkees
(31,450 posts)I truly believe our divided nation can be healed and brought together as one by Cats the musical, the movie, the disaster. In other news, my eyes are burning. Oh God, my eyes.
Youve heard of the uncanny valley effect? The eeriness or revulsion felt when looking at a humanoid figure thats not quite human? The digital era has given us many examples of the uncanny valley, but Cats is the first movie to entirely set up shop there. Based on the hardy Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, first staged in 1981 and still running somewhere on the planet, the film represents a further reworking of the original source, T.S. Eliots 1939 poetry collection, Old Possums Book of Practical Cats. Instead of the stage versions costume and make-up, however, director Tom Hooper (The Kings Speech, Les Miserables) has chosen to CGI and green-screen his talented cast of dancers and stars into furry bodysuits with whiskers, cat ears, and prehensile tails.
The effect just doesnt take. With certain players Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella, Robbie Fairchild as Munkustrap, even Francesca Hayward of the Royal Ballet as the naïve newcomer Victoria the faces seem to eerily float atop the faux fur, never quite jelling into one plane of vision. Some cats wear clothes, some dont; all are, um, neutered. As Macavity the Mystery Cat, Idris Elba has been villainized with green contact lenses and a trench coat; when in one dance number he appears without the coat, its like suddenly seeing him naked. Except not. None of this seems conducive to the hoped-for air of whimsy and wonder.
In fact, there are moments in Cats I would gladly pay to unsee, including the baby mice with faces of young girls and the tiny chorus line of cockroach Rockettes again, with human faces that Jennyanydots gleefully swallows with a crunch. Anyone who takes small children to this movie is setting them up for winged-monkey levels of night terrors.
hlthe2b
(102,343 posts)Donkees
(31,450 posts)sarge43
(28,942 posts)It'll sweep the Razzies.
jmowreader
(50,562 posts)The movie uses CGI to superimpose the cat looks on the human actors - and, apparently, doesnt track the people as well as it should. This makes one wonder...why did they not either just do the whole thing in CGI, or do it with makeup like theyve done it on the stage for 38 years?
sarge43
(28,942 posts)Further, first take of the CGI was even worse than what wound up in the theater. So, at almost the last moment they had to go back and try to correct.
One reviewer IMO nailed it -- human bodies just can't be made to look like cat's bodies. Humans moving around on all fours just don't have the supple look that cats have, thus the unnatural creepy factor.
I've only seen clips, but that low level lighting really ruined the dance scenes. Could barely see them.
CGI still can't effectively capture the movement of organic bodies or even movement we're used to observing. The folding buildings and streets in Inception or Dr Strange is something we never seen in real world, so we have no preconceived reference to compare it to and we accept it. However, we damn well know what cats look like and how they move.
I agree with you. They should have gone with the stage costumes. Not same ones, something even more eye catching. God knowth they had the budget. Keep the CGI for the sets.
A shame because they had A list talent to work with.
jmowreader
(50,562 posts)The show is set in an alley. We all know what they look like. Save the CGI for elevating Grizabella to the Heaviside Layer, and do the rest of the show as practical effects.
They spent $95 million on this thing, and they could have pulled it off for half that without the CGI.
sarge43
(28,942 posts)When it's good, it's very, very good. When it's bad, we get Cats.