Everybody was baffled and freaked out by the ‘digital fur technology’ used to turn stars like Taylor Swift, James Corden and Dame Judi Dench into felines for the big screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, and there were so many questions. Why do the cats have boobs? Why are the cats so small, but with human bodies? Why is Jason Derulo there? But some of the stars of the movie have urged movie-goers to give peace – er, we mean Cats, a chance.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Danny Collins, who plays Mungojerrie, said: ‘We were always expecting some reaction to it. I thought the strong reaction was quite amusing really — my personal feeling is that was kind of better than there being no reaction, than people kind of being like “meh”.’ And Naoimh Morgan, who plays Rumpleteazer, said: ‘If you don’t know the musical, to you it’s just humans covered in fur and that’s like, “What is this? What is this world?” ‘But once you see the movie, if you give it a chance and see the movie, you will forget that side of things and you will just be involved in this story and in this new world and you’ll just appreciate it for what it is.’
While Robbie Fairchild – who plays Munkustrap – had a fair point, saying: ‘When you think about Avatar, when Avatar first came out, everyone was like, “Ooh, oh God!” But I think Avatar did pretty well. So I think we’re OK.’ Avatar only just lost its highest grossing movie of all time title to Avengers: Endgame this year, 10 years after its release, so it’s a good example. While the reaction to the trailer was decidely mixed, the first reviews for the movie are pretty good, although some critics called it ‘bewildering’ and ‘way too horny for its own good’, which is not what we expected from a film about singing cats. —Metro
