December 22. Day 356. Feeling catty

A little while back I had a headache so bad I presented at a hospital emergency department where I was fed serious painkillers through a drip. It's hard to know if it was the drugs or the pain but weird shit was going on in my head. My senses were all out of synch and at one point I heard voices. A work colleague, obviously more familiar with the dark art of migraines, asked me a number of questions. Did I have nausea? visual disturbance? light sensitivity? Aphasia (word salad she explained)? Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes. Classic migraine, she said. Well yes.


But I had many of the same strange headspins watching Cats. Disclosure. I do not like Cats. I have an allergic reaction to felines and my reaction to Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is even more extreme. I mean, a musical should have decent show tunes, right? So I probably wasn't going to love the movie adaptation. But this was just weird. You know when kids start to draw and a person could easily be the same height as a house or a dragonfly? There was about the same visual logic in this movie. The performances were mostly okay but every cast member seemed to be performing in a different movie. And even when she's being a cat, Rebel Wilson relies on fat jokes and stupid humour.
I will give it points for adding a small amount of dialogue in an attempt to create an actual plot. The lack of Lycra is also a plus. But when you take off points for fur coats, complete lack of internal logic or consistency and the fact that the audience laughed at the "heart-felt" bits, well you know you have a giant furball of a film. I'm glad I saw it. But, like the migraine, I was really, really glad when it stopped. And it was rather nice to step out of the cinema into a London Street pretty much into the exact street where Cats was set. Happily there were no over-scaled felines or mice with children's faces.