Cats: The Musical (Commemorative Edition)
by David Mallet
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Actor: Elaine Paige, John Mills, Ken Page, Michael Gruber, Rosemarie FordDirector: David Mallet
Brand: Universal Studios
Cinematographer: Nicholas D. Knowland
Producer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Producer: Andy Picheta
Producer: Gary Lucchesi
Writer: T.S. Eliot
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-09-12
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Cats: The Musical (Commemorative Edition)
DVD Review: Time to Change the Litter Box
Summary: 2 Stars
In the 80's, after Cats became the phenomenon it became, commercials for newly-opened Broadway musicals would often feature an audience member enthusiastically exclaiming "It's Better than CATS!" Just from watching these commercials, some of which where for Stinkers like QUILTERS, it would appear that anything was better than CATS. This video proves those commercials right. Anything IS better than Cats.
What can one say about CATS? Tony Kushner sums it up pretty well when he has a character in his opus ANGELS IN AMERICA proclaim faux-enthusiasticly that "It's about Cats! Singing, Dancing Cats!" That's pretty much all to it. Sure, there's a shoestring plot (a tribe of cats have gathered together to decide which one of them gets to go to Kitty Heaven and get reincarnated. Or something. And somehow it won the Tony award for best Book of a musical), but CATS is one irrelevant song away from a musical review. About a dozen cats get a number about how special they are: This one is a magician, that one works on a train, another is some sort of master Criminal. At random points, they stop to dance irrelevantly and, at one point, have what a friend referrs to as "a cat orgy". Taken at face value, such an evening couldn't be more than a train wreck. But CATS somehow draws you into it's world, for better or for worse. In the case of this video, however, it is definitely for worse.
CATS may prove magical in a live performance, but this video falls to capture even a shred of whatever attracts the audience to it onstage. The video direction and lighting reduces the magical junkyard set of John Napier into a garish, tacky Vegas spectacular (though some would claim that CATS is little more than that to begin with) and the choreography of Gillian Lynne, highly praised in the original London and Broadway mountings, seems amateurish and ugly onscreen. Without the crucial distractions of good direction and beautiful sets, the glaring flaws in Andrew Lloyd Weber's score comes hurtling to the forefront of the conscious mind: repetitive, overblown and dull. I'm not sure who's fault this is: The video Director's, Lynne's, or Lloyd Weber's, but it leaves a black hole in the center of the video.
You can do nothing but pity the poor actors involved, some of whom are very good: Michael Gruber dances well, sings well and brings the right gravitas to the tribe leader Munkustrap, Jo Gibb and Drew Varley are an engaging pair of cat burglars (get it?) and Jacob Brent has a fantastic dance turn as the Magical Mr. Mistofelees. Also deserving mention are the duo of Aeva May and Rosemarie Ford, who sexily croon "Macavity", a jazz duet about a cat who is the "Napoleon of Crime", like nobody's business. Best of all are two older members of the cast: Elaine Paige as the tragic Grizabella and Sir John Mills as Gus the Theater Cat. The 90-year old Mills charms everyone off the stage and sings (in a beautiful quivery tenor) with an earnestness that brings a tear to your eye, and Paige, the originator of her part, belts out the one listenable song, the famous "Memory" with aplomb.
The third senior cast member, Ken Page as the patriarch Deuteronomy, has little to do but sit and look magisterial, which he does well. But on the other hand, John Partridge shakes his tail as The Rum Tum Tugger (an Elvis spoof) without an inch of sex appeal, and Susan McKenna is cloying and cutesy as the motherly Gumby Cat. Few of the other felines make any impression.
However fine CATS may be onstage (and even that is debatable), this video is a dismal failure, capturing none of the magic and all of the silliness of musical theatre. It's things like this that give musicals a bad name. If I were you, I'd pretend you are a mouse and run far, far, away from these CATS.
Description of Cats: The Musical (Commemorative Edition)
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