Cats

Why?

The long-running musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics from “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”, an anthology of delightful poems by T.S. Eliot, worked on the stage because the cast was wearing theatrical makeup, spandex bodysuits and, having been conceived in the early eighties, legwarmers. No one expected the actors to look like real cats but they moved like cats. The musical has a threadbare plot but somehow it doesn’t matter because humans pretending to be singing and dancing cats is an illusion that can be sustained in the physical make-believe of the wooden stage.

Whose idea was it to transfer it to the screen literally with CGI? It is known since the days of King Kong, made in 1933, that if movies are to be fantastical, they need to look realistic, otherwise the illusion doesn’t work. This is why outer space in sci-fi movies looks like actual space, and spacecraft looks like it could fly and you could be in it. With the exception of Chewbacca, who is clearly a guy in a gorilla suit, creatures need to look real. Hence, Dame Judi Dench coated in digital fur and whiskers, looking like a Teletubby that walked into an exploding hair salon, is not gonna cut it.

Bizarre does not even begin to describe it. The resulting CGI salad is one of human faces but feline ears, furry human bodies complete with non-furry human hands and feet, and distracting CGI tails, not to speak…