History YMMV / Cats

** When a [[https://twitter.com/mike_blacklist/status/1208139131391332352 notification to theater managers]] about getting new prints with "some improved visual effects" made the rounds on Twitter, there was many a joke about the movie getting what was basically a Day One Patch.

* ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs: When ''WebVideo/TheCinemaSnob'' reviewed this with ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'', he asks the viewers during "The old Gumbie Cat" if they've ever watched ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' while drinking absinthe.

* AudienceAlienatingPremise: Adapting ''Cats'' to film is a unique challenge: stage-to-screen adaptations normally only appeal to musical fans, and ''Cats'' in particular relies on an ExcusePlot where the spectacle and theatrics come first. In an attempt to appeal more to a casual moviegoing audience, several drastic changes were made to the source material. The songs were especially affected, being drastically altered in arrangement and performance, which put off fans of the original show. However, the spectacle is much less of a draw on film compared to a live performance, and the paper-thin plot still didn't draw in casual viewers. On top of that, the original costumes were swapped out in favor of giving the actors bodysuits of digital fur, which both fans and casual viewers have called unsettling and uncomfortably sexual. The end result was a product that had a difficult time appealing to anybody.

* OvershadowedByControversy: To this day, the film is best known for its large quantities of UnintentionalUncannyValley because of Hooper's decision to [[{{Rotoscoping}} rotoscope]] CGI cat costumes over the actors' skintight bodysuits--instead of using standard MotionCapture--and for HostilityOnTheSet between Hooper and the (overworked) VFX team.

* UnfortunateImplications: Creator/LindsayEllis's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6iqAip-ZNo&t=2226s video essay]] claims the film downplays the homoeroticism between Mistoffolees and the Rum Tum Tugger from some stagings of the show by making them both unambiguously and exclusively attracted to Victoria. According to her, it's an especially egregious DoubleStandard for a movie that's already so erotic to ''still'' go out of its way to be decidedly heteronormative.

** Despite criticisms that Music/JenniferHudson was too young to play Grizabella at 37, the first actresses to play her on stage (Elaine Paige in London, Betty Buckley in New York) were actually ''younger'' at only 33 and 34, respectively (many other stage Grizabellas have been around the same age). Of course, the make-up for the stage version conveyed the WhiteDwarfStarlet look just fine, and suspension of disbelief with regards to age is easier to take on the stage. In the film however, it's just Jennifer Hudson's very youthful face on a normal cat body.

* HardToAdaptWork: Story changes aside, the film's detractors feel that the biggest problem in adapting ''Cats'' to film is that it doesn't work in live-action ''at all'' and that an animated version would have been vastly superior in practice alone.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Story changes aside, the film's detractors feel that the biggest problem in adapting ''Cats'' to film is that it doesn't work in live-action ''at all'' and that an animated version would have been vastly superior in practice alone.

* WereStillRelevantDammit: Andrew Lloyd Webber's [[ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime decision to change Rum Tum Tugger]] from a Music/MickJagger-esque rock star to [[TotallyRadical a hip-hop]] [[YoungerAndHipper "street cat"]]. Tugger's update was [[http://www.yahoo.com/news/rum-tum-tugger-rap-west-end-revival-cats-162018089.html met with criticism]]. Both critics and theatre fans [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks condemned the re-working of the character]], and so in the end it was phased out in favour of the original.

** Finally, as this film was one of the last major studio releases that made it to theaters prior to the UsefulNotes/CoronavirusPandemic of 2020 onward and all the misery it wrought on both pop culture and society as a whole (especially in the United States due to it crossing paths with the divisive Creator/DonaldTrump administration), jokes that the movie ''really was'' a harbinger of the End Times, as so many had snarked prior to release and in reviews, proliferated. Along with jokes that the disastrous events of 2020 were God punishing humanity for making the ''Cats'' movie.

** "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer", in the revised, more well-known version of the song, had parts of the song in 4/4 time and other parts in 7/8 time, leading to the song building in energy and being a very fun, upbeat number about how cats would play with things and cause mischief. The movie adaptation kept the song in 4/4 the whole way through, giving it a slow jazz feel, but also making it lower energy and making the cats feel more menacing than playful. This version had its fans, but overwhelmingly, fans preferred the faster version.

** Music/JenniferHudson would likely have regarded as a fantastic casting choice for any of the female characters ''except'' Grizabella. And while both her acting and singing in the role are top-notch, many perceived her as being too ''young'' for the part (though as seen in FranchiseOriginalSin, this is not true). However, her very attractive and youthful appearance plays against the idea of Grizabella being old and worn down. This was ''not'' helped by the film doing little to create this effect through makeup or costuming as the stage shows do... likely to prevent covering up Jennifer Hudson's very famous face.

** The stage musical was similarly divisive upon opening, especially in New York, precisely because of how strange and bizarre it was - some audience members walking out in disgust. It did, however, have just as many fans because of the {{Camp}} and weirdness, and the experience of seeing it in the theatre made the spectacle a part of the fun. The film however tries so hard for realism that it goes straight into UnintentionalUncannyValley; the actors are scaled down to miniature (often unsuccessfully, being either too big or too small) and their faces on realistic cat fur, along with more typical cat movements and mannerisms - in contrast to the make-up and choreography that was more evocative than literal (Tom Hooper apparently wanted to see footage of actual cats performing what the actors would do for reference).

*** The UncannyValley nature of the titular cats was heavily criticized, with Tom Hooper defending it on the basis of trying to be realistic. While that works for a fairly grounded musical like ''Les Misérables'', ''Cats'' is one of the gaudiest and most surreal musicals ever made, and thus any attempts at realism were inherently missing the point of the play and inevitably plunged into UnintentionalUncannyValley.

** Many comparisons to the original trailer for Creator/{{Paramount}}'s ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' [[Film/SonicTheHedgehog2020 movie]] have been made. Many have joked that the movie is actually an adaptation of ''VideoGame/SonicRush'', with Big the Cat being in it for whatever reason. Others have pasted Sonic's UnintentionalUncannyValley face on the humanoid cat bodies, the results are surprisingly preferable. There's also jokes that Sonic saying "Uh... meow?" was actually {{Foreshadowing}}. Not helping is the fact that Moving Picture Company’s Vancouver branch did VFX work on ''both'' movies, and was shuttered before they both came out.

* WTHCostumingDepartment: The infamous "digital fur" costumes. While there were some {{motion capture}} effects, by and large, the actors wore skintight body suits and the VFX team ''manually {{rotoscop|ing}}ed'' CGI cat costumes onto them. At best, the effect is unconvincing, with the virtual costumes mostly floating on top of their subjects and the lighting never quite matching up. At worst, it's an unholy mishmash of human and cat features right out of UnintentionalUncannyValley. The worst of which is Macavity, who's fur is colored to match Idris Elba's ''skin tone'', with horrifying results. We can thank Universal giving the VFX team no time to refine this technique and pairing them up with a director who only barely understood how animation works for that.

* FetishRetardant: One of the biggest criticisms the film gets is how weirdly horny and sexual it is, constantly trying to make the various cats seem sexy, which obviously falls flat when combined with the rampant UncannyValley. It doesn't help that it also has an utterly inconsistent relationship with clothing. It ''might've'' worked if the cats were strictly clothed or unclothed, but the mixture of clothed and unclothed cats makes everyone suddenly register as varying degrees of "naked" and things become much more uncomfortable (particularly once the clothed cats ''disrobe'').

** The stage musical was similarly divisive upon opening, especially in New York, precisely because of how strange and bizarre it was - some audience members walking out in disgust. It did, however, have just as many fans because of the {{Camp}} and weirdness, and the experience of seeing it in the theatre made the spectacle a part of the fun. The film however tries so hard for realism that it goes straight into the UncannyValley; the actors are scaled down to miniature (often unsuccessfully, being either too big or too small) and their faces on realistic cat fur, along with more typical cat movements and mannerisms - in contrast to the make-up and choreography that was more evocative than literal (Tom Hooper apparently wanted to see footage of actual cats performing what the actors would do for reference).

*** The UncannyValley nature of the titular cats was heavily criticized, with Tom Hooper defending it on the basis of trying to be realistic. While that works for a fairly grounded musical like ''Les Misérables'', ''Cats'' is one of the gaudiest and most surreal musicals ever made, and thus any attempts at realism were inherently missing the point of the play and inevitably plunged into the UncannyValley.

** Due to the film's [[UncannyValley radically redesigned CGI characters]] freaking out almost everyone, [[EveryoneHasStandards even the]] UsefulNotes/FurryFandom, and with its official trailer being released the same day as ''Film/ITChapterTwo''[='=]s own, people have joked that ''Cats'' was competing for (or even winning) the scariest movie of the year.

** Many comparisons to the original trailer for Creator/{{Paramount}}'s ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' [[Film/SonicTheHedgehog2020 movie]] have been made. Many have joked that the movie is actually an adaptation of ''VideoGame/SonicRush'', with Big the Cat being in it for whatever reason. Others have pasted Sonic's UncannyValley face on the humanoid cat bodies, the results are surprisingly preferable. There's also jokes that Sonic saying "Uh... meow?" was actually {{Foreshadowing}}. Not helping is the fact that Moving Picture Company’s Vancouver branch did VFX work on ''both'' movies, and was shuttered before they both came out.

* NightmareFuel: Let's just say the entire movie is this in order to save some time, especially with the UncannyValley.

* SoBadItsGood: Though few have praised the film overall, it’s most vocal detractors consider it highly entertaining for all of the [[UncannyValley wrong]] [[{{Narm}} reasons]]. It helps that plenty of things that were already considered silly in the show remain unchanged for the adaptation and, to them, look downright ridiculous when depicted here.
* SpecialEffectFailure: And not just because of the [[UncannyValley questionable stylistic choice to have all the cats be live-actors with CGI cat bodies]]. The film was shot without the standard 3D tracking bodysuits, meaning that, rather than MotionCapture, most of the actor's movements were manually {{rotoscop|ing}}ed by the CGI animators in a new software created specifically for the film to achieve its realistic fur look. This, combined with the film being ChristmasRushed and director Tom Hooper's apparent inability to grasp how the animation process works, resulted in much of the CGI in the finished film being at best broken and at worst ''incomplete''. Even the "improved special effects" print Universal released just days after the original theatrical release was considered a less-than-marginal improvement.

* UncannyValley: Easily the biggest complaint.

* UncertainAudience: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMvbHr-HY-M Katherine Steele]] pointed out that parts of the film seemed to be taking itself seriously (Tom Hooper apparently wanted to go for a variant of the realism he had done with ''Film/LesMiserables2012'') but there were several cast members hamming it up and going more for {{Camp}} and whimsy. The film seemed to be going for MultipleDemographicAppeal by giving the musical a plot to make it more accessible to a mainstream audience, but then that had the effect of turning off fans of the original show. And there's also, of course, the visuals of the film. By making the cats portrayed by real people, along with the proportions of humans, and giving them CG ears and tails, the end result is the movie [[UncannyValley is too visually unappealing]] for the both average moviegoers and fans of the musical.
* UnfortunateImplications: Creator/LindsayEllis's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6iqAip-ZNo&t=2226s video essay]] claims the film downplays the homoeroticism between Mistoffolees and the Rum Tum Tugger from some stagings of the show by making them both unambiguously and exclusively attracted to Victoria. According to her, it's an especially egregious DoubleStandard for a movie that's already so erotic to ''still'' go out of its way to be decidedly heteronormative.
* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: Taken individually, many of the visuals and rendering in the movie is quite impressive, with ''enormous'' amounts of animal fur, specular lighting and oversized environments. Taken as a surrealist endeavor it has some appeal, but the character designs inherently slammed into the UncannyValley and as a full length movie not every scene will maintain the same level of quality. This incited some online conflict when it came to criticizing the CG effects, as when overworked visual effect houses go bankrupt creating the MoneyMakingShot for blockbuster movies it seems ignorant to criticize the thousands of man hours put into animating poor design choices.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: People in skintight cat costumes singing and dancing on stage? Unusual, perhaps, but it works. Taking that exact same setup and filming it with some UncannyValley CGI and chroma-keying and scaling down the actors into oversized sets? For some, it's just so bafflingly ill-conceived at every step of the way that you get the feeling [[HighOnCatnip catnip]] ''had'' to be involved in the creative process. Humorously enough, director Tom Hooper [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything claimed that he'd never even heard of the stuff]]. Even more humorously, its theater showings were often [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/people-are-seeing-cats-while-high-out-of-their-minds-these-are-their-stories/2020/01/05/d0ebfb3a-2beb-11ea-bcb3-ac6482c4a92f_story.html watched on drugs.]]

* WTHCostumingDepartment: The infamous "digital fur" costumes. While there were some {{motion capture}} effects, by and large, the actors wore skintight body suits and the VFX team ''manually {{rotoscop|ing}}ed'' CGI cat costumes onto them. At best, the effect is unconvincing, with the virtual costumes mostly floating on top of their subjects and the lighting never quite matching up. At worst, it's an unholy mishmash of human and cat features right out of the UncannyValley. The worst of which is Macavity, who's fur is colored to match Idris Elba's ''skin tone'', with horrifying results. We can thank Universal giving the VFX team no time to refine this technique and pairing them up with a director who only barely understood how animation works for that.

** The teaser trailer turned the movie into a pop-culture punching bag overnight, particularly because of [[UncannyValley how the cats looked]]. Reactions could be split into "''Cats'' looks horrible, no way I'm watching this!" or "''Cats'' looks horrible, can't wait to watch this!"

* HamAndCheese: Music/TaylorSwift and Creator/IanMcKellen are having the time of their life while the rest of the cast TookTheBadFilmSeriously.

* SoBadItsGood: Though few have called ''Cats'' "good" in '''ANY''' sense of the word, the film's most vocal detractors consider it highly entertaining for all of the [[UncannyValley wrong]] [[{{Narm}} reasons]]. It helps that plenty of things that were already considered silly in the show remain unchanged for the adaptation and, to them, look downright ridiculous when depicted here.

** As explained by [=YouTuber=] WebVideo/{{Sideways}}, due to the choice of the actors leading the orchestra rather than the other way around (which is how things are usually done), the beat of the music is frequently off, which adds to the poor quality of the music. He also criticized the decision to make Victoria the protagonist, arguing that it detracted from the emotional core of the original show, Grizabella.
** "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer", in the well known 1998 version, had parts of the song in 4/4 time and other parts in 7/8 time, leading to the song building in energy and being a very fun, upbeat number about how cats would play with things and cause mischief. The movie adaptation kept the song in 4/4 the whole way through, giving it a slow jazz feel, but also making it lower energy and making the cats feel more menacing than playful. This version had its fans, but overwhelmingly, fans preferred the faster version.

** AlternativeCharacterInterpretation can also be caused by who is doing what part. For example, one critic compared Creator/BettyBuckley's Grizabella to Elaine Paige's Grizabella as follows:

* AnimationAgeGhetto: It's been hypothesized that the only reason that the proposed {{animated adaptation}} fell through, despite the near-universal consensus that it would have been a more appropriate medium to adapt the show into than [[UncannyValley hyper-realistic, CGI-heavy live-action]], was because Universal attempted to [[AwardBait guarantee Oscar prestige]] by deliberately kowtowing to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' [[BiasSteamroller unflinching preference for gritty, realistic live-action and prejudice against animation]].

** As explained by YouTuber WebVideo/{{Sideways}}, due to the choice of the actors leading the orchestra rather than the other way around (which is how things are usually done), the beat of the music is frequently off, which adds to the poor quality of the music. He also criticized the decision to make Victoria the protagonist, arguing that it detracted from the emotional core of the original show, Grizabella.

--''This is the worst thing I've ever seen. This is what death feels like. This is the worst ketamine trip. This is awful. This is not a film, this is chaos. This is the CGI from ''[[Film/TheScorpionKing Scorpion King]]''. I don't know if I'm five minutes in or five hours. Nothing matters anymore. [[DespairEventHorizon This is the death of all things. Fuck it.]]'' \\

** Skimbleshanks is just another Jellicle candidate, but given that his scene was one of the few that a majority of audiences found enjoyable is probably the single most popular cat to audiences. Even before his introduction proper, his distinct look as one of the cats in ensemble scenes made him visually interesting. As stated above, this is likely because he was played by ballet and tap dancer Steven McRae to a click track for the complex 13/8 time signature, removing the awkward improvisation and unskilled singers of many other songs.

** As explained by YouTuber [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3aK-EK5V2k Sideways]], due to the choice of the actors leading the orchestra rather than the other way around (which is how things are usually done), the beat of the music is frequently off, which adds to the poor quality of the music. He also criticized the decision to make Victoria the protagonist, arguing that it detracted from the emotional core of the original show, Grizabella.