Tom Hooper to direct movie of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats'

[shinlyle]

Saw Star Wars this weekend, and, when dropping off my daughter's friend who went with us, the mom was adamant that she wanted to see "Cats". My daughter snickered and said, "Oh God, my eyes".
The mother said it looked good, and she was going to see it. I told her she should see the reviews first. I think maybe her going to see it lead to her gouging out her own eyes with a broach Oedipus Rex style and becoming a blind prophet.

 

[Schlosser85]

 

[MadVillainy]

Even though I hate the term "Oscar Bait"...that's largely what Hooper is.
All his movies are these dry period pieces that artistes may like, but they don't do anything for me.
And I'm not against period pieces at all. I really liked The Favourite and Atonement is one of my favorite romance movies ever. But Hooper is just boring. As mentioned before, no way in hell King's Speech should have won. Danish Girl looked boring as hell. And I tried Les Mis, but them singing every line of dialogue wasn't for me

That said, I will be watching this

 

[Arachnerd]

I will pray for you, Blackman.

 

[Legendver2]

This was certainly a strange movie. Like, there's literally a part where

Spoiler

Rebel Wilson's character looked like she was playing with her...uh...crotch area.

 

[Zorro]

This face.

What's the context behind that? He doesn't like Tarantino or his filmmaking or was Tarantino just rambling on about something?

 

[Broseph44]

This was certainly a strange movie. Like, there's literally a part where

Spoiler

Rebel Wilson's character looked like she was playing with her...uh...crotch area.

 

[shinlyle]

This was certainly a strange movie. Like, there's literally a part where

Spoiler

Rebel Wilson's character looked like she was playing with her...uh...crotch area.

ugh....blech...
Well, I guess somebody needs to.

 

[shinlyle]

What's the context behind that? He doesn't like Tarantino or his filmmaking or was Tarantino just rambling on about something?

That's the same face I make when my dad talks about how he has "savings" and I'm just thinking about how much I can pay my electric bill. He may as well be saying "OK Boomer".

 

[The Guard]

My wife was in the show a few years ago, and she liked it well enough when she saw it, so I gave it a shot. It's not exactly good, but there are some surprisingly poignant moments in it. This probably could have worked, if they had just accepted that CATS is CATS, and let it be CATS, instead of trying to mimic the tone of CATS while inserting modern jokes and slapstick and pretending it has a plot and a subplot, which kills any flow it has. And they do that for a third of the film, and then just sort of drop the approach, which was a good thing, but it feels really uneven and awkwardly paced as a result.

It's pretty much all spectacle. Visually, it's pretty solid. The effects I saw were good except for the miniature creatures; mice, cockroaches, etc, which are designed to look like people in vaudeville costumes. The dancing and movement is pretty well done.

The movie tries to give everything that happens in the show a broader context, but not via dialogue, just by sort of placing a scene in context. And that works about half the time.

The numbers that they have to nail, they absolutely do (except for the first one, which Hooper can't figure out how to shoot). This might be the first time I've seen "Magical Mr Mistoffeles" with an actual point to it.

They combine/reduce several sets of characters to streamline things. Victoria takes a lot of the roles other characters have in the show. Acting is okay. Rebel Wilson is very, very hit or miss, James Corden is solid, Judi Dench is pretty good and Ian McKellan is excellent. Robbie Fairchild, who plays Munkastrap, really commits to it and he was one of my favorite parts. Jennifer Hudson absolutely nails the last part of Memory, but isn't that great the rest of the time. They weirdly don't do much of anything to flesh out Grizzabella, they give Macavity a subplot instead, but it's super predictable, and he has weird magic powers for some reason.

The hate it's getting is a bit much. Either you like and buy into the concept or you don't. Worth a watch if you're a decent fan of the musical, but if you've always hated it, this won't do much to change your feelings on it.

 

[MadVillainy]

My wife was in the show a few years ago, and she liked it well enough when she saw it, so I gave it a shot. It's not exactly good, but there are some surprisingly poignant moments in it. This probably could have worked, if they had just accepted that CATS is CATS, and let it be CATS, instead of trying to mimic the tone of CATS while inserting modern slapstick and pretending it has a plot and a subplot. They do that for a third of the film, and then just sort of drop the approach, which was a good thing.

It's a spectacle. Visually, it's pretty solid. The effects I saw were good except for the miniature creates; mice, cockroaches, etc. The dancing and movement is pretty well done.

The movie tries to give everything that happens in the show a broader context, but not via dialogue, just by sort of placing a scene in context. And that works about half the time.

The numbers that they have to nail, they absolutely do (except for the first one, which Hooper can't figure out how to shoot). This might be the first time I've seen "Magical Mr Mistoffeles" with an actual point to it.

They combine/reduce several sets of characters to streamline things. Victoria takes a lot of the roles other characters have in the show. Acting is okay. Rebel Wilson is very, very hit or miss, James Corden is solid, Judi Dench is pretty good and Ian McKellan is excellent. Robbie Fairchild, who plays Munkastrup, really commits to it and he was one of my favorite parts. Jennifer Hudson nails the last part of Memory, but isn't that great the rest of the time. They weirdly don't do much of anything to flesh out Grizzabella, they give Macavity a subplot instead, but it's super predictable, and he has weird magic powers for some reason.

The hate it's getting is a bit much. Either you like and buy into the concept or you don't. Worth a watch if you're a decent fan of the musical.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

In my experience, most view King's Speech as a perfectly fine movie, but it has a reputation as one of the most overrated Oscar winners ever. Most I've talked to don't think it deserved to win its categories (This was the same year as The Social Network, remember) Hooper himself also has a pretty prevalent reputation as arrogant and pretentious. His movies since King's Speech have also been mostly received as middling-level Oscar-bait, yet the industry still carries him as an elite.

So the Hooper hate isn't anything new. Cats just gives us all a brilliantly absurd expression of it.

The same year as Inception.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

What's the context behind that? He doesn't like Tarantino or his filmmaking or was Tarantino just rambling on about something?

Did you really just ask if Tarantino was rambling about something? Does Tarantino do anything else?

 

[DarthSkywalker]

My wife was in the show a few years ago, and she liked it well enough when she saw it, so I gave it a shot. It's not exactly good, but there are some surprisingly poignant moments in it. This probably could have worked, if they had just accepted that CATS is CATS, and let it be CATS, instead of trying to mimic the tone of CATS while inserting modern jokes and slapstick and pretending it has a plot and a subplot, which kills any flow it has. And they do that for a third of the film, and then just sort of drop the approach, which was a good thing, but it feels really uneven and awkwardly paced as a result.

It's pretty much all spectacle. Visually, it's pretty solid. The effects I saw were good except for the miniature creatures; mice, cockroaches, etc, which are designed to look like people in vaudeville costumes. The dancing and movement is pretty well done.

The movie tries to give everything that happens in the show a broader context, but not via dialogue, just by sort of placing a scene in context. And that works about half the time.

The numbers that they have to nail, they absolutely do (except for the first one, which Hooper can't figure out how to shoot). This might be the first time I've seen "Magical Mr Mistoffeles" with an actual point to it.

They combine/reduce several sets of characters to streamline things. Victoria takes a lot of the roles other characters have in the show. Acting is okay. Rebel Wilson is very, very hit or miss, James Corden is solid, Judi Dench is pretty good and Ian McKellan is excellent. Robbie Fairchild, who plays Munkastrap, really commits to it and he was one of my favorite parts. Jennifer Hudson absolutely nails the last part of Memory, but isn't that great the rest of the time. They weirdly don't do much of anything to flesh out Grizzabella, they give Macavity a subplot instead, but it's super predictable, and he has weird magic powers for some reason.

The hate it's getting is a bit much. Either you like and buy into the concept or you don't. Worth a watch if you're a decent fan of the musical, but if you've always hated it, this won't do much to change your feelings on it.

Who are you to judge how people respond to torture?!

 

[TheVileOne]

Having actually seen the Broadway show, the way they adapted some of the songs and music sounds terrible.

Nothing against Taylor Swift, but the way they had her do the Macavity song was awful. Not to mention it sounds like she's restricted to just that one sing which isn't how that character is in the play.

 

[JP]

I saw this on Christmas Eve and enjoyed it. I'll preface that by saying I've seen the show on Broadway multiple times and enjoy it a lot. The movie is pretty faithful to the show, so it's hard for me to call it some sort of abomination. It's a good adaptation of a show I really like... so I liked it, haha.

Random thoughts/qualms:

1. James Corden and Rebel Wilson should never work again. Jesus Christ.
2. Ian McKellen is incredible and it almost makes me wish everyone else in the film was doing what he was doing. It's like he just... got it.
3. Mistoffelees is one of those unwritten queer characters in musical theater, so making him a love interest to Victoria was... weird.

 

[The Guard]

Having actually seen the Broadway show, the way they adapted some of the songs and music sounds terrible.

Nothing against Taylor Swift, but the way they had her do the Macavity song was awful. Not to mention it sounds like she's restricted to just that one sing which isn't how that character is in the play.

She must not have the belt for it, it was weird. They combined her character with another one, and made her a sort of Girl Friday to Macavity. They gave most of the stuff from the other female parts to Victoria.

 

[Pink Ranger]

Not the worst movie I've seen, but I stand by my earlier assertions that this is one musical that's almost impossible to adapt to a standard film.

 

[terry78]

Did you really just ask if Tarantino was rambling about something? Does Tarantino do anything else?

To be fair he probably needed to hear that ****.

 

[jmc]

Well, I dragged a friend (who had seen and hated the stage show) along to watch this because I needed someone to laugh at this movie with, and boy was this one of the weirdest movie experiences I've ever sat through. I went through 4 stages watching this movie. First, I was in shock for a good 20-25 mins astonished by the fact someone would allow this movie to be made. The second was curiosity because there was something about the weirdness that was strangely compelling at first. Third was boredom because after the curiosity wore off it began to dawn on me just how dull this movie actually was, it wasn't even bad enough to laugh at. And last was creativity, during the last 20 mins of the movie I kept thinking about how I'd actually fix this mess of a film. And I'd do that a couple of ways. I'd first not make it a musical, most of the songs are ****, so get rid of them. Then I'd centre the story around Ballerina Cat trying to get home after becoming lost, the only other cats I'd keep are Magic Cat to be a friend/love interest, Old Lady cat as the fairy godmother type of character, Evil Black Cat as the antagonist, and Memory Cat as someone Ballerina Cat befriends. Structure everything around that. Every other cat can **** off. Next, I'd tell the actors to stop acting like actual cats and play it honestly, but I'd also give them prosthetic noses to make them look far more like actual cats, I actually don't think the CGI costumes were terrible, but the faces were distracting as hell. And I'd give them all clothing to wear. Makes no sense for some cats to be wearing clothes and not others. Build your film around that and maybe it stands a chance, but as is, this is a film that should have been halted well before concept art was even developed. Somebody needed to be a friend to Hooper and say 'This is a terrible idea'.

 

[kguillou]

Welp.

Cats Movie On Track to Lose $71 Million

 

[terry78]

They could have done it better. Just going the Avatar route probably would have fared better.

 

[writer0327]

Welp.

Cats Movie On Track to Lose $71 Million

Ouch, this has to smart.

 

[Gold Samurai]

Welp.

Cats Movie On Track to Lose $71 Million

‘Cats’ Bound To Lose At Least $71M After All Ancillaries: Here’s How – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: No amount of star power from Taylor Swift, James Corden, Idris Elba, Jason Derulo, etc., nor the direction of Oscar-winner Tom Hooper, could save Cats at the global box office.

Our finance sources informed us over this weekend that the Universal/Amblin/Working Title feature adaptation of the near $4 billion-grossing Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical is bound to lose at least $71M — that is, if the pic reaches a global box office result of $100M, meaning $40M stateside and $60M abroad. This is based off a production cost of $90M net–the pic was shot on soundstages in London–and a $115M estimated global P&A spend.

 

[sueb1863]

I'm not surprised that they tried to make the movie, since they've been trying to make a movie out of Cats since it opened. I am surprised that NObody saw those designs and said, maybe we need to rethink that look.

It might have fared better if they'd just made the cats look less horrific.