CATS Review - ralphthemoviemaker

I have never seen the Broadway musical of cats and when I heard a feature film was coming out I thought I would have a different perspective on the musical seeing it for the first time in the film adaptation it's created a language between dances and actors one of the main selling points of this film was this state of the art digital fur technology we've used digital technology to create the most perfect covering of fur these are people but they're cats and this is kind of blowing my mind this holiday season I will believe whatever that means there were some aspects of this production that I do really like I enjoyed how bizarre it was yeah I appreciate all the dedication I appreciate the people care some people actually did their job pretty well they the team who built the sets did a kind of good job everything was scaled up to make the actors appear smaller more cat sized there's some good dance choreography I could make out in between the fast-paced editing in July Universal released the first trailer for this film and people did not respond well I really was weirded out by just the look of this film as were many other people [Music] they altered the look of the cats after the first trailer because he got such a bad reception Tom Hooper said it reminded me of what my original intention was which was to not have the visual effects get in a way and to protect the human face in the design there's like tears coming out of my eyes and so began a seven-year oh my god seven years and then I looked up Steven Spielberg's animated adaptation of cats which was supposed to come out at that point it was in pre-production but there's all this concept art that's really cool from bridesmaid out to walks with authors there's only so much footage I can show you of this film as Universal Studios doesn't want me to use their footage from their films for some reason on top of that this is a musical and I can't play any of the music I guess I can pitch shift it or add some filter you know when I review a film I love being able to show the beauty of the cinematography lighting frame composition I guess this looks better it's clearly trying to go for a different tone it doesn't seem as fun or as playful as the Broadway musical but you know let's give it a chance the film starts with a cat face in the clouds all right then some synth starts playing and a human sized human throws a small-sized cgi cat human into an alleyway we follow a group of cats that have very cat-like names I'm going to go through the names right now and afterward I'm gonna test myself on it so Jennifer Watson is playing [Music] Jennifer Hudson is Grizabella Grizabella okay Judi Dench's is mrs. mrs. Mustafa Lee's oh dude you wanna meet Judi Dench's old Deuteronomy who has a song [Music] Taylor Swift is a bomb Barela rum tum tugger okay she's bustopher jones Rumple lumple still she's Jenny any dots chef Francesca Hayward is Victoria a Drucilla's Macavity Plato and and Socrates Ian McKellen is old old bumbles team these cats don't just have one name they have three names when I tell you a cat must have three different names I was waiting for that to come in to play in the story they sing about how there are Jellicle cats I'm not liking walking with cats at all whoa did they really do that or was that CGI I don't know well I may even watching the movie I can't even tell if it's a real performer doing it or if it's just a bunch of CG you can adapt it well or you can adapt it really poorly and every choice they made in adapting it's like why did they why do they choose to make the cats look like this people didn't respond to it well at first why didn't they just wait we're gonna delay the movie and redesign all the cats to make it better or maybe just make it an animated movie my mom you see him [Music] come on these cuts a random white close-up of a guy come on come on what's your name cat got your tongue Victoria you don't have to pause for the audience to laugh every year they have a Jellicle extravaganza and they have to pick one winter cat that they choose to ascend up in a giant balloon and go to heaven or something Victoria just runs into a character they sing a little bit and then she runs into another character and they sing a little more rebel Wilson you should perform on Broadway cats are not the only creature shown in the film there are also CGI mice with like little human heads on them that are way too small compared to the cats and then you have these roaches the proportions are so off and they keep changing during the movie oh my god you know making movies is hard we're not even 15 minutes in I feel like and this is a nightmare oh it's another character can we have another musical number and he's eating a chicken like it's not even the CGI it's the human faces on the model and it's like the human hands and feet like that's just a rebel Wilson's normal hand oh great it's James Corden you could sing his backstory now I just wish they got better singers some of them are good obviously the people who weren't hired just cuz they're famous may cavity shows up and just kidnaps Jenny any dots with his magical powers and now she just stumbles across Jennifer oh my god with this nonsense you got a little thing there yellow thing there I think it's drying up judi dench shows up in a fur coat where did she get that she has to wear this coat that was like 80 pounds yes yeah and she would [ __ ] about it a lot and I was like oh my god Judi Dench is like bitching and I think the point of the original cats is to be a little fun and this is going for like a mystical emotional it's so uncomfortable to watch Taylor Swift's praise a bunch of catnip all over crowd of cats god I'm gonna need some catnip to watch this movie macavity shows up Judi Dench's cat is kidnapped and mr. Mistoffelees has to use some magic to bring her back and she just comes back five minutes later well she got away but you never see like what happened beside there I will win you don't see how am I supposed to feel when he goes like this is it supposed to be funny macavity kidnaps Jenny any dots and Buster for Jones for no reason and also skimble shanks he kidnapped and then he kidnaps Ian McKellen where'd he get this boat they try to add more of a plot to it by giving these characters things to do you drown in that you you're not charged you can take any characters an example like let's look at MUNGO JERRY and Rumple teaser for some reason they've teamed up with macavity to help him out why are all these cats working for yourself Oh a bit of fun we didn't know he was gonna take old juked oh she's got a nickname now old dude then why didn't the cavalry tell you he was gonna do if he wasn't gonna kidnap old dude we didn't know he was gonna take out Juke rebel Wilson earlier in the movie zipped out of her regular skin and into some musical outfit and she does the same thing right here dude the crazy baby Jennifer Hudson performs memory which I guess is supposed to be the powerhouse song very good okay you won the cat competition can the movie be over now please you owe the best cut I have ever met the story's over just end the movie already Jesus now it's over now it's over now it's over there we go now it's all even ends with a cat face in the clouds just like how it's started I'm waiting for Tom uber to come out and be like okay the real movies are gonna start now there isn't much of a story or tension I guess there's a villain were introduced to a Juris Alva who plays Macavity but he doesn't really do anything he wants to be the one chosen to be reincarnated but it's not up to him judi dench is just like nah never and that's it I choose the cat that deserves a new life he tries to hang on to the balloon at the end I guess he falls into a building and he's fine there's no story to tie these segments together really half of these characters she meets never show up again or they're in the background the point of the original cats isn't the plot it's about Andrew Lloyd Webber's music it's about the spectacle the makeup and the giant colorful set this movie has some spectacle Wow amazing oh my god this is incredible Oh God tap dancing man I just love tap dancing I wish I could clap my shoes together oh great my cat lipped dealers here I can't wait to see where this joke I'm sorry your big musical number everyone man I feel really bad about it hey good luck at home okay just keep the ice against your eyes watching this has made me discover and appreciate the cat's show I understand many people don't like this musical as well but based on what I've seen it's definitely better than this difficult one because they're meant to be felines but they're also meant to be humans so the makeup has got to be strong enough for the theatre to actually be able to be seen everywhere in the theatre but not be too strong so it is actually masks out the character of the humans themselves did you hear that mr. director uh uh the show was met with criticism at first but maybe the reason it's so revered is because people looked past that and admired the creativity and the talent that went into making it and then never really been a dance show in England and it was poetry being set to music with dance I mean it looked like a recipe for disaster not going to be a children's musical about pussycat no not at all that's the exciting thing about the show it won't be a jazz show it won't be a politico it won't be a modern art show it will be all these things we hope and also something that we've never done this is probably my favorite song an old fan it's got a good beat movie of course butchered it I even watched this documentary about the making of the show you can see how passionate and hands-on Andrew Lloyd Webber is just a little bit less a little bit less joy screenful you know and I think I mean really done was the word Brahma I think to get to the word you know this Brummel of cats is a real celebration at both bustopher earlier I mentioned Spielberg's adaptation which ever made it past development see you said yet turned down Disney you know because he didn't want them to be Pussycats or turned into cartoon cat well I was sort of seeing them a little bit more like hot gossip indeed yes yes you said the time I think Tom would have liked that I wonder if that's the reason why they never went through with it although I don't know why that would stop them just pick one or the other they made both at the same time [Music] sometimes they crawl on the floor sometimes they don't sometimes they just walk around it depends on what Tom Hooper feels like the humor feels so out of place in this film stop milking it basically all of the jokes and puns made it into the trailers okay I got your tongue the film is just a series of scenes of the main character running into another character and they sing their backstory it's a talent show so they do a little dance they sing a little they jump around he jumps and hits his balls they completely redesigned James Corden's cat from that first trailer to the final release the old version of bustopher jones is way creepier looking than the new one if you compare and contrast you can see they added a couple cats in the background they gave James Corden like big eyebrows and a big mustache they made his ears a little less scary-looking there's parts of the trailer where you see James Corden's cat that are not in the movie there's even this one part where he bounces his belly on a guy oh my god look at the face on that it looks like they just added whiskers onto a normal head but in the movie this part isn't there at all it's replaced with this my visits are occasional to the senior education and it is against babies digital third technology she still got the snot here you go they had about five months from the release of that trailer to Christmas to tidy up those visual effects I guess they really needed this to come out on Christmas if they wanted it to do well on Christmas day there was a ninety seven percent increase in ticket sales and having a musical like cats that has broad appeal should have been a surefire hit but because the film was rushed to hit that release date it totally ruined the whole thing they just had to start marketing it in the summer what we saw in that original trailer was the very early stages of the CGI or at least that's the excuse they use the same thing happened with that sonic movie and these that same excuse oh it was the early stages we just finished filming and we just that was some early VFX work they're just releasing footage of an unfinished product this is our first impression of the movie people love CGI instead of putting people in costumes someone decided I guess Tom Hooper that would be better to have everyone be CGI I guess they thought it could sell tickets and it definitely drummed up publicity for this film and I know they say there's no such thing as bad publicity every other person I know who's seen this movie just talks about how creepy it looks and not only does every character look like this but we have to follow them around for the entire hour and 50 minute there is so much CGI that I just think it looks like an animated movie so why wasn't this just an animated film because you're looking around at this big room which is got lots of green screens actors oh no you're wrong I mean most of the time you you're looking around at a vast set I mean we built all the props oversized all the set the only their new green screen environment Switchback square at the end and Piccadilly Circus because they're just so vast even though there was digital technology used in the character creation I wanted to shoot it as much like as a conventional movie so so so we built everything for real all this effort put into building these sets and it ends up not even looking real because there's a bunch of CGI jumping cats all over the place it's somewhere in the middle of an animated film and a live-action film and it's just kind of awkward this is all computer-generated so every single piece of fur is added by a computer if it's technology that's never ever been used in a film before I don't believe it I was in a big sort of round CGI suit that's also covered in dots uh-huh and then under that you have a suit with these computers and then they add all the fur that is the tail everything it's quite extraordinary on Sun believable that they could do that it seems like almost like you didn't even need to be in the movie do you remember those Robert Zemeckis animated films like Beowulf and then there was that movie Mars Needs Moms Robert Zemeckis was one of the greatest directors in Hollywood he started devoting his efforts into directing and producing animated films they really insisted this was some groundbreaking technology we've used digital technology to create the most perfect covering of fur I guess it's a technical accomplishment but it doesn't look visually appealing the atom bomb was a pretty major technical accomplishment to the Broadway musical is so much more watchable than this film adaptation at least I'm watching real people performing it has some pretty good songs it has a personality a few years ago to do something like this was impossible that's just the thing now is we have the resources to do anything yeah it's now possible to motion track all these people and make them look like cats and I guess you can make a movie of that but is it a good idea why was this made they enjoyed making it and that's a reason enough let's get real get real this isn't some little indie film this is a multi-million dollar studio product they wanted it to make money they wanted it to do well sure it can have artistic integrity too I'm not saying that but holy [ __ ] this is a disaster do you think this is what they wanted to invest in the decision to make these cats look like this was a bad decision even though I thought this movie was just supposed to be a fun time it's also going for some Oscars given the amount of money that was poured into the CGI they were hoping for an award nomination for some of these things they were probably hoping to win for a song they were probably hoping to get nominated for Best Visual Effects I take it about as seriously as the Oscar campaign for the Phanatic they didn't even send out any screeners for the movie they pretty much gave up on it maybe if they weren't pushing for this release date the animators could have had more time to make the designs better maybe they could have brought in a director who's experienced with animation Hollywood musicals have been doing great the past couple of years at least one a year is able to break out and become very marketable they're able to sell the soundtrack on the radio they get big stars the movies do really well then this year Universal was like get a load of cats I appreciate that everyone was passionate but there must be some understanding that a general audience has seen a ton of other musicals and movie musicals since the original cats in 1981 what about this take on the story is fresh and interesting Tom Hooper has been working on this for a long time clearly he was passionate about making them CGI cats and getting the technology to work but it's just a live-action adaptation of a play that was written 40 years ago why do we need to tell this story now who is this made for people who have never watched cats well this doesn't make me interested in cats this makes me terrified of cats is it for fans of cats do you think the singing and dancing is as good as what an audience would find in a Broadway play I've always disliked this about movies based on musicals it's the same thing with that laymen's movie the original lame is is an operetta but in the musical you have phenomenal singers you have Philip Quast playing Javert with this phenomenal voice and then you have Russell Crowe they enhance the roles of James Corden rebel Wilson's cat so that they can do more silly things and Pat out the runtime so in the original musical bustopher jones was not sung by the James Corden character it was sung by Jenny any dots jelly lorem and bomba bomba love Runa so when there's tons of good singers and dancers in the world who could probably do a good job why are we hiring these untalented unfunny celebrities James Corden has a talk show he could drum up publicity for this movie so let's hire him based on that they did the same thing with the Lion King movie they just put John Oliver in it wouldn't see The Lion King in sleep is haven't seen cats you are making a mockery out of this man's work this film is like a joke the entire cast had to attend acting school I mean cat school yeah yeah cat school they did a lot of research for this musical to make sure it was true to the life of a real cat the only one who I thought was a good singer and dancer was francesca hayward hired based on her talents not her star power the film had about a hundred million dollar budget and it doesn't really show there are some aspects of this film that are so butchered that it ruins the entire thing as cause members of the motion picture cats [Applause] when trying to talk about the music I think watching the movie at the same time as listening to the music does it a disservice I've chosen to just listen to it without the visual yes you when I close my eyes the movie I envision fun and I don't know silly what they went with in the marketing of the movie and glowy orange lighting and emotional musical numbers that they highlight in the trailer it's like they're going for those heartstrings they really are the musical was based on a book of poems by TS Eliot so beautiful ghosts is the song that was written by Taylor Swift but in the movie she doesn't sing it Francesca Hayward sings it the film is seen through Victoria's eyes first thing I said was we have to have a song for Victoria it's an incredibly important central part of the whole film and apparently she wrote it with Andrew Lloyd Webber you know he might have sat in a room with her for a day I played it to you and I said there's a new song we said I'll do the lyric I knew did it then there Morris the song isn't that bad though it's not like when I was watching a Latin and the new songs are just like blaring in your face because they were so different from the original songs and they were just really bad this one doesn't really stick out that much but it's so transparent that they wrote this song because they wanted to get an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song so they could perform it at the Oscars and get publicity for their movie cats it's a big publicity show and it was an excuse to get this movie in the spotlight but that's probably how they got Taylor Swift to sign on to this kind of thing they told her look we'll give you an original song you get to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber and you get you have to be in the movie for like 5-10 minutes doesn't even matter you just got to show up in a green-screen suit and we'll CG like all this cat stuff on you and she's like okay I'll take a few days cavity oh yeah the cast sang live on set it makes the stinging sound more organic to the scene but it doesn't sound as good it worked for layman's or raw does it really work for cats Jennifer Hudson's supposed to be really sad at this part but she also performed the same exact song on The Voice just normally and it's better it's a trade-off I guess Tom Hooper was willing to make Bob jump way Mazzara was the first musical he directed very kind of grounded and up close the colors are definitely more vibrant it's going for a goofier tone this in a way is supposed to be a tribute to cats the actual animal you know cats are really cuddly and cute that's why people have them as pets who would keep this thing as a pet get a bunch of real cats to act this out well when I talked about cats mi9 live this video I mentioned how you can't get a cat to do anything because they're all lazy unless it's like an animated cat see this is what they should have gone with I appreciate that Universal gave total creative control to Tom Hooper it's just the film he made is so bizarre [Music] [Music] special technology boy what's up my house having some tea and crumpets around her you will make a fun of my new cat's film well I'm gonna challenge you to the death Judi Dench watch it from the sidelines I was cast as Grizabella in 1981 and did all the rehearsals and then just before we opened I snapped my Achilles tendon and I thought that that was my history with cats but it turns out not to be as magical mr. ma let's read some IMDB user reviews for cats because if you want great film criticism that's where you go the reviews are abysmal oh my god one star one star one star one star one star this isn't sorted by lowest rating first this is the default setting I don't mean to dog pile on it or cat pile on it you can make anything into a good movie even this I mean the foundation was there as it stands it does feel kind of rushed or spit out Tom Hooper was basically scrambling to get this movie done the day of the premiere Universal released another version of the movie after the initial release that fixed some of the visual effects you can't patch a movie like this it's ridiculous you know 10 20 years ago they have to deliver the film canisters to the theater you couldn't make any changes then if you did it would be a big pain in the ass now I guess the studio's just send these movies over Google Drive to the theater they just stream it over Wi-Fi is there a final version of this movie even is the version I'm watching right now even the one they released in theaters or did they touch it up a bit this is so dishonest [Music] having trouble breathing and I'm having trouble breathing and oh yeah I'm watching cats [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you [Applause]

Channel: undefined

Views: 914,637

Rating: 4.9471102 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: LqFcz_ovA6Q

Length: 28min 55sec (1735 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/GraveDancer1971]

#releasethebuttholecut

[u/cjsc9079]

The editing is much better on this compared to the last few vids. Ralph is back!

[u/Tonio_]

D I G I T A L F U R T E C H N O L O G Y

[u/Varrick24]

Real step up from his previous videos. Glad to see him get his groove back

[u/GraveDancer1971]

Was the animation at 25:17 done in Dreams for the PS4?

[u/HDtrash]

He’s back! Good to see him back in form

[u/ThanusThiccMan]

YESSSSSSSSSS

[u/Pixelated_Fudge]

at 14:35 in the review, is that brass thing clipping through the front cats shoulder?

[u/chickenoken-king]

That was a weird ass movie