People have been hating Cats: The Musical for years. Now that it’s been brought to a mainstream audience, more and more people are coming to realize just how much they hate Cats: The Musical.  

The entire show has always been love it or hate it. It’s certainly one of the stranger musicals that I’ve seen on stage and on screen, but personally, I like Cats. What I think people fail to realize about the concept of the musical is that it isn’t really meant to make sense or be realistic. It’s just meant to be fun. If you go into it with suspended disbelief, it can be a really enjoyable experience.

Cats was based on a bunch of poems by T. S. Eliot, about different types of cats and what they do for fun. Those poems were translated into a musical with a loosely structured plot. The point is not necessarily to understand every aspect of it, but just to have fun. 

While the musical is lighthearted and fun, the movie did have a few parts that definitely should not have been included. Such as the infamous cockroach scene, was has circulated widely on social media. I also questioned the choice to have children play the mice, because it was implied that the cats were… eating the children? Was that what they were trying to convey? It seemed so. 

I though overall the dancing and singing in the movie were incredibly well executed. Actors sang live, just like the Les Misérables adaptation from a few years ago. This gave the movie much more emotion, and gave more of a stage show feeling. 

The CGI was a very controversial aspect of the film. While it was a bit unsettling at first, it wasn’t all the different from the costumes that the original West End cats wore. They were just digitally enhanced, which did add an aspect of realism to the original design while still showing respect for how the play was originally intended to be done. 

Overall, I enjoyed the Cats movie. It was strange, but it did have aspects of charm and fun. I think if audiences had gone into the film with open minds, it might’ve done better. The media ruined Cats’ chances before it could even open. While it certainly wasn’t for everyone, it wasn’t as bad as everyone is saying.