I remember a good documentary about the Rank Organisation on TV, can’t remember the name of it now, Jonathon Woss was owriginally invited to narrwate it, but they had to change their minds, I wonder why that was? ;-)
I was watching with interest the reaction to the new film “Cats”, I had seen the trailer and that was it for me, I mean it makes sense to put some of the best bits in the trailer, and it they were the best I’d rather do six month community service than have to watch the whole film. I hate to see a film fail, but that’s the business, big stakes, big risks, you win some you lose some, nobody wins them all.
I looked for critics reviews but they were not made public until the film was released on Dec.20 I think it was, that alone to me was a bad sign, it was also foolish to release it at the same time as the Star Wars film, when critics hold their fire waiting for whites of eyes first, it’s usually curtains for the product.
When the reviews finally came out the critics were trying to run with the fox and chase with the hounds, bloody cowards, praising the lavish sets, the choreography, and the special effects, but steering away from what they get paid to do, just say if is it good or bad, bad is the correct answer no matter how you dress the word up. I only saw one writer who actually said what he thought of it, brave and honest man, he’ll probably get the chop now.
I just knew the whole thing would flop, it was to my mind a very stupid thing to make a film out of a very successful stage musical and expect it to do well, talk about milking something to death!, first it was a poem then a musical, and finally a film, poetic justice for greed, anyway who would pay good money to watch humans pretending to be cats prancing around covered in digital fur? What the hell is digital fur anyway?
The only winners here were the actors, I hope they grabbed their money and ran before the manure hits the windmill.
They can always look on the bright side, maybe in 50 years time it will become a “cult” film for cool cats.
Here’s one Turkey who escaped Christmas, only to have it’s neck rung in early January.
But that’s only my personal critical opinion, and I remember what playwright Brendan Behan said about critics
“Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves”
That’s all well and good Brendan, but at the end of the day the only critic you can rely on is yourself, either you like something or you don’t, and everyone is different.
