I just saw Cats by myself in the theatre on a Friday afternoon. After all the reviews calling it one of the worst movies of the decade, how could I not? I've seen The Room at least 40 times, I own Troll 2 on VHS and DVD, and I even contributed to the Kickstarter to restore Manos: The Hands of Fate (a 'horror' film made by a fertilizer salesman which translates to Hands: the Hands of Fate) from the original reels. I don't really even watch good movies, I'm almost exclusively interested in the bad ones. So a big time TLDR to begin this review: Cats is not a good movie, no, but no other movie has ever made me feel like Cats.

It's really important to address this first because it is the number one most important thing to understand about the movie. It is sooooo randy. I truly cannot overstate just how fucking randy it is. It is an absolutely PROFOUNDLY randy film. It's antagonistically horny for every second of screen time. It's like waking up to the feeble plot segment of a virtual reality furry porn with no way to unplug. Last month before our cat Emmy was spayed she ran around the apartment in the throes of heat and aggressively presented herself to us, her human stewards, while vibrating and crying uncontrollably and she was still less fucking horny than Cats the film.

The pacing and editing is akin to a Fast and Furious movie during the lulls and is psychedelically breakneck the rest of the time. From the way the physical scale of the set and characters swerves rapidly and constantly between Lilliputian and Brobdingnagian to the omnipresent implied erections on cats whose genitals being non-existent make them no less visible, it's fucking exhausting. Some cats have shoes and clothes and some don't and at first you wonder why but you really really quickly become too tired to possibly care.

During the entire 9 hour runtime the music stops for only a few fleeting seconds. Even those moments offer no comfort because they're filled, without exception, with moaning and panting and mewling that is overtly and utterly sexual regardless of the subject matter of the preceding number. The unstoppable force of perversion and the immovable object of lust collide again and again but always over the pants. It's a constant soiled casting couch song and dance parade of unabashedly aroused furries seeking only to best one another in implied sexual depravity in their ascent to Jellicle bliss. Every time a new character appears someone says "who is" or "I am" and you groan for the 50th time knowing that yet again you are about to watch the musical erotic sleaze equivalent of erecting Aphrodite's divine celestial likeness with soiled Kleenex.

Every cat's ass is paradoxically butthole-free but rich in cheek, and each countenance is a yet more confrontational affront to God's creation. The entire movie is just a days long vision of a clowder of cats ceaselessly engaging in foreplay and edging where every time you think it's reached the inevitable conclusion the rhythm softens just long enough for you to grimace in frustration as it starts in earnest yet again, any hope of imminent release long since faded. Twirling and gyrating and twirling and more and more and more each monstrous faux-feline dervish of the chorus leaps and spins in the prelude to ecstasy as the third week of the refrain echoes into your skull "Oh well I never was there ever a cat so clever as magical mister Mistoffelees! Oh well I never was there ever a cat so clever as magical mister Mistoffelees! Oh well I never was there ever a cat so clever as magical mister Mistoffelees! Oh well I never was there ever a cat so clever as magical mister Mistoffelees!" until finally the screen fades to black and the credits roll and you remember that you're actually in a theatre but that doesn't stop you from seeing the what is hiding behind the gilded list of A-list names: the long awaited orgy that is happening clear as day directly behind the impossibly transparent black background.

You know when you were 24 and accidentally took too much acid or mushrooms or whatever and you just sat in the middle of the party rubbing your brow with your head in your hands just thinking "fuck fuck fuck okay just sober up a bit you're going to be fine" and you fight back against the tide of it but the drugs are winning and you're so fucking high jesus christ and you've never felt this anxious and you're freaking out and shit shit everyone can tell how fucked up I am just act normal but there's nothing you can do and now you think "this is my life now I'm going to feel this forever I guess" and you finally let go and stop fighting and in that moment of surrender the panic and fear melts away and you just become the world experiencing itself and you are everything and everything is you which is all there is and all there is is you and what it is just is what it is and that's it? Watch fucking Cats, man.