I’m Not Going to Enjoy This. And Neither are You.
So, when there’s nothing going on in the film world, and you write for a film blog, you have to go out and make some news.
With that being said, I’m about to spin gold out of straw with this Cats behind the scenes trailer.
Watch me work.
When a man like Idris Elba wants to dance, dammit, let him dance.
And there is no better way to allow the soon to be first black James Bond, if the rumors among the social justice film critic activists are to be believed on Twitter, to scratch his dancing itch, than to give him a role in Cats.
Cats is a retelling by director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) of a story that’s been running on Broadway so long that every single one of our Talkbackers should have had their parents drag them kicking and screaming to it back in the day.
Hooper directs Cats as his followup to that other 100-year long, overwrought-play-turned to film, Les Miserables, starring a singing Russell Crowe.
My wife made me go to Les Miserables.
I fell asleep in the theater when Crowe started singing and then woke up and the revolution in France was over and the barricades had been taken down and the Germans were making trouble.
And, I’m still married today.
Moving On…
Along with Idris Elba, Cats stars James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift and that waddling tub of unfunny, low-rent-Melissa-McCarthy-knock-off, Rebel Wilson.
The mommy-boxed-wine crowd is going to love this film.
But don’t just read me.
If you’ve stuck around this long, what the hell, watch this behind the scenes clip below:
These Cat Costumes Aren’t Just for Dancing
I know there are reaction videos all over the Interwebs and the YouTubes of Taylor Swift (more on her later, if you’re still reading by that point) “reacting naturally with shock and surprise” to her “totally unexpected” turn in Cats.
And reacting to her form-fitting costume with a well-balanced tail. As every good human-sized cat should have.
I know that cats get a bad wrap in general, particularly that tabby from Captain Marvel.
But surely, this musical will be different!
Right!
Well, watch the full-length trailer below and then you can record your own reaction video!
If that doesn’t get you out of your seat to dance in the way that you know you can, twirling and rotating about the room in mommy-box-wine ecstasy, I don’t know what will.
Well, maybe the last push below the third headline.
Musicals On Film Suck. There, I Said It.
Look out your window.
Do you see people outside, singing and dancing and throwing their hands up in James-Cordon-on-Late-Night-CBS-show fashion?
No.
Most people I know don’t sing, or dance, or throw up their hands in any kind of fashion.
Most people that I know walk around and have barely enough coordination to manage their own lives, their own real-life conversations, or their own celebrations of whatever they call their “real” lives.
I know that people need escapist entertainment.
A move away from the terror and horror of their daily lived lives.
Or the tedium and boredom.
The fact is, this show has been running on Broadway in one form or another since 1981.
And before that, the book that this show is based on, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, was published in 1938 by T.S. Eliot.
That’s right, the author of one of the greatest poems about nihilism, existential despair, and depression in the 20th century, The Waste Land, authored a book of “light and whimsical poems” focused on feline psychology and sociology.
And now, 81 years later, I have been pushed into writing a review of a behind the scenes trailer to a film that wasn’t crying out to be made, starring people who are just in it for the check, but desperately want you to think otherwise.
Well, Cordon might be in it for the dancing. But that’s about it.
Idris Elba doesn’t deserve consideration for a shot at the Bond role after this, but I’m sure he’ll get support to do so from the Twitterverse.
Yeah. You’ll believe something all right.
Cats brought to you by Universal Pictures, the film company whose bright idea it was to launch a shared “Dark” Universe off the back of a needless The Mummy remake starring Tom Cruise, fills the litter box in your house with poo-poo, on December 20, 2019.
