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#it goes out of its way to strip all of the dignity and likable qualities from the character in its interpretation
tearlessrain · 2 years
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the only metric that should be used to determine whether an adaptation of Cats is good is “if cats could comprehend human media, would they approve of this”
a cat would approve of the stage show but be deeply insulted by the movie for the same reason a cat’s dignity can survive the most unhinged case of zoomies but not having a made up song sung about him. I will not elaborate further.
#actually I will elaborate but I will do so in the tags just to be difficult#the entire reason the stage show is good but the movie isn't exists on a micro level in the song bustopher jones#the poem/song in itself is making fun of neighborhood cats that mooch food off the whole street#but in its original intent it's clearly doing so affectionately and in a way that assigns a certain degree of dignity and respect to the cat#same vibe as in the modern day when you refer to your cat as a distinguished gentleman#even though he fell out of his cat tree trying to lick his own butt five minutes ago#the stage show captures that energy and exaggerates it and creates a highly likable character as a result#and then there's the movie#I'll admit it started off pretty strong in comparison to the wholesale character assassination of jenny anydots#but it quickly devolved the same way into something that holds absolutely no regard for the intent of the source material#it goes out of its way to strip all of the dignity and likable qualities from the character in its interpretation#and goes straight to mean-spirited mockery of everything we liked about the poem and the character in the first place#it doesn't feel like it understands that the song is about a genre of cat people encounter and not a specific person#either that or whoever directed it just really hates that type of cat#or completely forgot they were making a movie about cats but that seems unlikely because the movie is called cats#anyway that's why a cat would approve of the first but be insulted by the latter if it could understand either#cats definitely don't have the same concept of dignity as humans but they inarguably have one
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