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[0:01] Mike Abrams: There's a cat over here. There's a cat over there. And the wrong one died. And the wrong one died.

[0:16] Mike Abrams: Welcome to The Wrong Cat Died, the podcast breakdown of The Cats Tasha Fee. I'm your host, Mike Abrams, and today I have a very special bonus episode.

[0:25] Mike Abrams: I had the privilege of seeing CATS the movie a few days before it actually was released for a special press screening.

[0:33] Mike Abrams: And because, as you know, this podcast is incredibly important to the success of the movie, I wanted to make sure I reviewed it for you.

[0:41] Mike Abrams: And speaking of the success of this movie, I want to ask who at Universal decided it would be a good idea to have opening weekend the same weekend as Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker.

[0:52] Mike Abrams: I'm guessing whoever made that decision is likely the same person who decided Grizabella was the right choice to die.

[0:58] Mike Abrams: Either way, I want to talk about the movie and I want to do it without any spoilers. And to do that, I want to bring in a special guest.

[1:06] Mike Abrams: I had the pleasure of seeing this movie with podcast extraordinaire and the host of The Theatre Podcast, Alan Seales. So welcome, Alan.

[1:13] Alan Seales: Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me.

[1:15] Alan Seales: I'm glad that you were able to come experience this movie with me.

[1:19] Mike Abrams: And an experience it was.

[1:21] Alan Seales: It was. I highly recommend checking out Alan's podcast, also part of the Broadway Podcast Network.

[1:27] Mike Abrams: And we want to get into the movie. So, Alan, I want to tell you a quick story going in before I review this movie.

[1:34] Mike Abrams: Because I have a little bit of history reviewing movies.

[1:38] Mike Abrams: Back in college, I actually wrote a few movie reviews for the college paper.

[1:43] Mike Abrams: And the reason I did this is because freshman year, someone told me, hey, you can get free movie tickets and then $10 if you write a few hundred words.

[1:52] Alan Seales: $10 was a lot in college.

[1:54] Mike Abrams: It was a lot. Exactly. It was great.

[1:56] Mike Abrams: And so I said, that sounds amazing. Let me do that.

[1:59] Mike Abrams: So you have to go write some fake movie reviews for movies that have been out for a long time.

[2:03] Mike Abrams: And so I did those and kind of made it up and had a good time.

[2:08] Mike Abrams: And then I got asked to tackle my first real movie in theaters.

[2:14] Mike Abrams: And do you have a guess of what that movie was?

[2:16] Alan Seales: Ghostbusters.

[2:17] Mike Abrams: I wish. No, I'm not that old.

[2:20] Mike Abrams: Instead, it was the cinematic masterpiece, I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry, with Adam Sandler and Kevin James.

[2:28] Alan Seales: Which, I have to admit, I never saw.

[2:30] Mike Abrams: Never saw.

[2:31] Alan Seales: Because I could tell from the preview it was not something for me.

[2:33] Mike Abrams: Well, I'm glad you said that.

[2:35] Mike Abrams: So I went to the theater, I watched this movie, and then I gave it a grade.

[2:38] Mike Abrams: And what do you think I graded it on a school grading scale?

[2:42] Alan Seales: So A through F.

[2:43] Mike Abrams: Okay, A through F. Judging by the fact that it wasn't very good, I would say probably a C minus.

[2:53] Alan Seales: C minus. That was probably what most people would have.

[2:55] Mike Abrams: It has a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.

[2:58] Alan Seales: And I gave it an A minus.

[3:00] Mike Abrams: I think your scale is off, man.

[3:02] Mike Abrams: So the reason I'm telling you this is because I want to emphasize that when I go see movies, I'm a pretty easy grader.

[3:08] Mike Abrams: I don't go in with a lot of expectations.

[3:10] Mike Abrams: I just want to be amused, and I feel like I'm a fairly easily amused person.

[3:15] Mike Abrams: And so I feel like that's important for this context because the Cats movie was a cinematic experience.

[3:22] Mike Abrams: And I'm not sure if I would call it a good cinematic experience, but it was an experience.

[3:29] Mike Abrams: So we're going to get to grades at the end.

[3:32] Mike Abrams: We're not going to do A through F.

[3:34] Mike Abrams: We're going to do 1 through 9 Cat Lives because this is The Wrong Cat Died.

[3:37] Mike Abrams: But there are going to be plenty of actual reviews.

[3:41] Mike Abrams: So instead of doing a typical review, and I don't want to do spoilers, even though there's no spoilers.

[3:46] Mike Abrams: This movie's – no, the musical's been out for 40 years.

[3:48] Alan Seales: You know Grizabella dies at the end.

[3:51] Mike Abrams: Yeah, she dies at the end, although we'll get to the ending.

[3:53] Mike Abrams: Interesting choice of the ending.

[3:56] Mike Abrams: But instead what I want to do is I want to go through things you liked and you disliked about the movie.

[4:01] Mike Abrams: And so I know there's probably more dislikes than likes, but I feel like we can scratch through this and go back and forth with a few things to give the viewers a little bit of an idea of what they're going to see, what they can expect, and not necessarily go in and change their mind going in because I want people to still go see this movie.

[4:17] Alan Seales: I think it is worth seeing in a weird way.

[4:22] Mike Abrams: Everyone is going to pull something different out of it, whether they go see it for the nostalgia or they go see it because it's like Paul McCartney. They've never heard of this person before. They're like, oh, a new movie musical. I like those.

[4:36] Alan Seales: So I think, yes, I agree with you, Mike. Everybody needs to go see this.

[4:40] Alan Seales: I'm going to kick off with a dislike just because there's going to be more than the likes.

[4:44] Alan Seales: So I'm going to kick off with a dislike and I'm going to give credit to Christopher Gurr who said this in the bonus episode, but I did not like the dialogue.

[4:51] Mike Abrams: I agree. I agree that it took me out of the flow of the musical.

[4:57] Alan Seales: It really was clearly centered around explaining the plot to someone who hadn't seen the movie before because they talk about it being a competition and everyone's telling their stories and these are all things that I had to surmise the first time I saw it. And now they're given this free reign of, hey, the public's too dumb to figure this out. So we're going to tell them exactly what they're watching and I thought it was unnecessary.

[5:22] Mike Abrams: Yeah, I agree. Tom Hooper has experience. He did the Les Mis movie a couple of years back.

[5:28] Alan Seales: But they didn't have dialogue in there.

[5:29] Mike Abrams: Right. Well, Les Mis itself is an opera, right? There's no dialogue in the whole thing and it works and they didn't add dialogue.

[5:37] Alan Seales: But the opera itself, the music itself tells the full story.

[5:41] Mike Abrams: Whereas here, that obvious plot, I guess, hitting you over the head with what the plot is was missing.

[5:49] Alan Seales: So they decided to add it in.

[5:51] Alan Seales: Which is fair. And that kind of gets me to the part, my first like, which is I liked Victoria as a narrator.

[5:59] Mike Abrams: Me too.

[6:00] Alan Seales: I enjoyed seeing it. I thought it was a very clever and smart way to allow the audience to kind of understand what's going on and view this chaos the same way she was at the same time.

[6:14] Alan Seales: So a lot of the reactions that, especially if you haven't seen the musical, a lot of the reactions she was having are things that I had the first time I saw it in the theater.

[6:22] Alan Seales: And Francesca Hayward, this is her big introduction into film. She's a ballet dancer in the, an English ballerina in the Royal Ballet in London. And obviously the right choice for a perfect dancer, which takes me to my first like, is that she was not the best singer, which I liked.

[6:41] Mike Abrams: And I say that I like that because it was obviously a stylistic choice.

[6:44] Alan Seales: Tom Hooper, for Les Mis as well, he had everyone singing live. They weren't singing, they weren't mouthing to tracks, right?

[6:56] Mike Abrams: Interesting.

[6:57] Alan Seales: And so I didn't research this yet. I believe he probably did the same thing here with cats because you hear the breathing and you hear the foot stomps on the wood when they're inside in the rooms. You hear their feet hitting the ground. You hear them breathing. You hear them jumping when they're singing. You go to Broadway shows and you hear them like, they're grunting around while they're moving while they're singing because that's real and that's live. And he brought that into this movie, which I really, really liked.

[7:28] Mike Abrams: So that was something I agree with. I loved the dancing, just the fact that they integrated this. I mean a big part of seeing Cats the Musical is the dance numbers and they integrated, but it also led to one of my biggest dislikes, which was the cutting of the movie.

[7:47] Mike Abrams: The jump cuts.

[7:48] Alan Seales: The jump cuts were out of control.

[7:50] Mike Abrams: Every other few seconds I was cut out from watching someone do this incredible dance to a different version or a different angle of it, and it was a little nauseating.

[8:01] Alan Seales: That's something that I got annoyed with.

[8:04] Alan Seales: I think Glee did a lot of that with these big dance choral numbers. I'm like, just give me the wide shot. I just want to watch the wide shot.

[8:10] Mike Abrams: That's me coming from a theater background where I want to look at everybody on stage.

[8:16] Alan Seales: But I totally agree with you that I was like, oh, yeah, dancing, dancing, good. Oh, crap, they jump cut. Although now they're in a completely different location singing two seconds after where they just were.

[8:25] Mike Abrams: So obviously reality isn't real here.

[8:28] Alan Seales: Yeah, it was – it really didn't – it just made it hard to watch. And when you had the talent, the level of talent they had with dancers, it underutilized them.

[8:37] Mike Abrams: Oh, my gosh. They had the late twins.

[8:40] Alan Seales: The late twins.

[8:41] Mike Abrams: Yeah. I saw one, like, really good time when they were utilized, and the rest they were kind of in the background.

[8:46] Alan Seales: Yeah. Oh, that was kind of one of my dislikes a little bit is the underutilization, speaking of which, of the principals. Like you've got James Corden and Taylor Swift and these other major, major, probably very expensive to have in the movie people.

[9:02] Mike Abrams: Yes.

[9:03] Alan Seales: And we saw more of everybody else.

[9:06] Mike Abrams: I mean, I guess when O.D. came in, Dame Judi Dench came in, and we saw probably the most of her out of all the principals.

[9:15] Alan Seales: But –

[9:17] Mike Abrams: Well, Idris Elba is – he was in it a lot more than I was expecting because in the musical, Macavity is – he's not there.

[9:26] Alan Seales: And he was everywhere in this movie.

[9:28] Mike Abrams: He was a very center point. I mean they made him the antagonist and really hammered that home.

[9:34] Alan Seales: I was a fan of – I'm trying not to give away a spoiler. I was a fan of how he entered and exited until it was overused.

[9:45] Mike Abrams: So I had that as a dislike. But it also led me to one of my favorite likes, which was the crowd, because I'm assuming most everyone who's going to be in this theater is not all going for the same reasons.

[10:00] Mike Abrams: And our crowd definitely had some people that either were in an altered state of mind or were there for the comedic value of it when there's not – like the unintentional comedic value of it. And so at that particular time, every time he entered and exited, some guy about two rows behind us just started cackling. And that, to me, made this experience ten times better because the guy behind us and there's a guy right in front of us that were laughing at the most stupid –

[10:31] Mike Abrams: Serious moments. I loved, I absolutely loved. I think it made the experience so much better because it did take a little bit of this like, this is weird. And it's in its 2019 weird, you know, it's like not the 70s when it came out where it was thought provoking and new and different. It was now it's just, it's just kind of weird.

[10:55] Alan Seales: Did you ever see Team America from South Park?

[10:57] Mike Abrams: One of my favorite movies.

[10:58] Alan Seales: Right. So when they were creating the puppet, the marionettes for South Park, they actually had the face look too realistic at first, they had too many servos in the face.

[11:10] Mike Abrams: And so they took some out so it would look more, I guess, less like a real person, less like a real talking because it was more believable by the audience to see a marionette talking than a marionette that looks like a real person talking, right?

[11:23] Alan Seales: And so that gets me here again to one of my, one of my likes that then turned into a dislike was I love the technology that goes into this, because I don't know how they did. I mean, I assume it's some sort of like facial motion capture, obviously whole body motion capture but like Avatar, James Cameron, they total he pushed the envelope and, and, and had the avatars developed a new facial to animation technology for Avatar.

[11:50] Mike Abrams: So I feel like something like this, like that went into this with the whole body capture, which I was like, Oh, this is really cool how they're making these real people into cats.

[11:58] Alan Seales: But then I was like, Whoa, they are too sexy for me. Like, I was seriously attracted to white cat and I'm like, this is weird.

[12:09] Mike Abrams: It was uncomfortable.

[12:10] Alan Seales: It was uncomfortably weird. And I don't know if it was just unfinished, because, you know, you read the article, Tom Hooper said that they finished the final cut of the movie, like, what, three, a couple hours before hours before the before the first premiere. Yeah.

[12:25] Mike Abrams: But still, it was like, it was too much human for me to believe that they were cats. And it was a little bit strange.

[12:47] Alan Seales: It got a lot of press leading up to the movie, because of it reminded everyone of Sonic the Hedgehog.

[12:53] Mike Abrams: About how the whole crowd had an uproar. And that's what happened during the trailers. The crowd got an uproar about the CGI and just the fake fur and what was happening.

[13:02] Alan Seales: And it was a little distracting in the movie.

[13:05] Mike Abrams: Well, they had probably somebody I want to watch the credits. They probably had somebody or a whole team of people that were just looking at are responsible for the tails.

[13:15] Alan Seales: You know, the tail.

[13:16] Mike Abrams: Like the dinosaur supervisor in Jurassic Park.

[13:19] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah, the tailography, because the tails had in the ears to ears had to correspond and the tails had to correspond to choreography to singing to emotions.

[13:28] Mike Abrams: And obviously, obviously, they're not going to have that in real life while they're going around dancing and singing. So it's got to be added in post.

[13:35] Alan Seales: Yeah, that's it's a it's a lot. Let me let me go to a couple other I want to do a couple other really quick ones before we we cut to some awards we have at the end.

[13:48] Mike Abrams: The ones I want to talk about a couple of the characters that they made some changes to or they just adjusted more than I was expecting.

[13:55] Alan Seales: So I thought some were really well done and some were disaster.

[13:58] Mike Abrams: The one that I thought was really well done was Taylor Swift.

[14:01] Alan Seales: She sings the entire Macavity song by herself.

[14:04] Mike Abrams: The whole catnip being in there. I just thought that whole scene was really clever.

[14:10] Alan Seales: And it's a great song. It's a fun song.

[14:14] Mike Abrams: And I thought they did a really good job with it. But to your point, they paid a lot of money for her to be on screen for about seven minutes.

[14:20] Alan Seales: Yeah, I totally agree. Somebody like Jennifer Hudson, who keeps recurring.

[14:25] Mike Abrams: She's coming back. You know, Grizabella keeps coming in and out of the scenes like, OK, cool.

[14:29] Alan Seales: Pay some money for that for her. She's worth it. She sings that crap out of that song at the end.

[14:34] Mike Abrams: Very much. And yeah, Tay Tay.

[14:38] Alan Seales: I mean, she brought it. She wrote the end credit song, which was cool.

[14:43] Mike Abrams: Which she didn't sing.

[14:44] Alan Seales: Which she didn't sing, but yeah, she wrote it.

[14:47] Mike Abrams: So this is an original song for the movie that didn't actually go in the movie. It's a credit song.

[14:51] Alan Seales: But yeah, could have cut that.

[14:53] Mike Abrams: I think Ian McKellen, too, as Gus, I think that was probably not needed.

[15:00] Alan Seales: He did a great job.

[15:01] Mike Abrams: I think a lot of them were not needed.

[15:03] Alan Seales: He did a great job.

[15:04] Mike Abrams: But are you seeing this movie if they don't have all the stars?

[15:07] Alan Seales: Oh yeah, absolutely. Because me personally, I want to go see this.

[15:11] Mike Abrams: I think you have a podcast called The Theater Podcast.

[15:15] Alan Seales: So that doesn't surprise me.

[15:17] Mike Abrams: But I think the majority of people are choosing between the opening weekend between Star Wars, Little Woman with Emma Watson, and this.

[15:26] Alan Seales: They had to have some names.

[15:28] Mike Abrams: Oh, that's true. I guess who was the lead in Les Mis?

[15:31] Alan Seales: Russell Crowe, who's one of the worst singers I've ever heard.

[15:34] Mike Abrams: And the lead female was Anne Hathaway.

[15:36] Alan Seales: So they had some names, too.

[15:38] Mike Abrams: Right. And can at least sing.

[15:40] Alan Seales: And Hugh Jackman can at least sing.

[15:42] Mike Abrams: Hugh has a theater background, of course.

[15:45] Alan Seales: He's doing Music Man in 2020.

[15:48] Mike Abrams: And yeah, Russell Crowe, I thought, was a weird choice.

[15:52] Alan Seales: So Tom, if you're listening, what's going on, man?

[15:56] Mike Abrams: So the other one that was lightly bothered me, not as much as the rest, but they kind of changed Mungo Jerry and Ripple Teaser's song.

[16:05] Alan Seales: It was not like the original.

[16:08] Mike Abrams: And it was a fun song, because it's just always a fun, quick interlude.

[16:12] Alan Seales: But I didn't like the way that they did it.

[16:16] Mike Abrams: I just wasn't a fan of the change.

[16:18] Alan Seales: But the one I want to get to, and the last one I get to before we talk briefly about the ending, because I don't want to spoil the ending, but the ending was an odd choice, is I want to talk about what they did to the magical Mr. Mistoffelees.

[16:31] Mike Abrams: He was magical in the literal sense of the word.

[16:35] Alan Seales: They destroyed one of the best characters of the entire musical by making him awkward and weird.

[16:45] Mike Abrams: And he's got a little awkward love story with Victoria that they kind of allude to a couple times.

[16:52] Alan Seales: And just everything about it was wrong.

[16:56] Mike Abrams: There's going to be purists who are going to watch the normal magical Mr. Mistoffelees on stage and wonder what this decision was.

[17:05] Alan Seales: Well, you've talked about this so many times, even with all the guests, that there's so many gay undertones and even bisexual or whatever it is.

[17:17] Mike Abrams: Which brings me to my point of this, or which brings me to another point, is that in this entire movie, there were no homosexual relationships at all.

[17:29] Alan Seales: I mean, there was lots of cat cuddling and they rubbed heads together like cats do.

[17:34] Mike Abrams: But there was, like you said, in whatever limited love story that there were, it was all heterosexual.

[17:42] Alan Seales: They cut out a lot of his cool parts.

[17:45] Mike Abrams: He conjured Old Deuteronomy, which that's a material part of the story.

[17:50] Alan Seales: So that was needed to be there.

[17:52] Mike Abrams: But even that, they made it a really weird way of doing it.

[17:54] Alan Seales: And they made him look super awkward and not magical.

[17:58] Mike Abrams: And I was not a fan.

[18:00] Alan Seales: That's, I think, one of the best characters in the entire musical, that they made into this unnecessarily quirky, weird friend.

[18:08] Mike Abrams: Yeah, he became more of a sidekick than a showman.

[18:13] Alan Seales: Yeah, not a fan.

[18:14] Mike Abrams: Now I want to talk quickly about the ending and then we're going to go to our categories.

[18:18] Alan Seales: I don't want to spoil the ending, but I just want to say, until I got to the ending, I was almost ready to say, you know what?

[18:28] Mike Abrams: I could buy this.

[18:29] Alan Seales: I could buy this movie.

[18:30] Mike Abrams: I could get this whole thing.

[18:32] Alan Seales: There are some interesting choices.

[18:33] Mike Abrams: It's an experience.

[18:34] Alan Seales: There's definitely things I didn't like.

[18:35] Mike Abrams: But I was impressed with what they had to work with and how they put it together.

[18:42] Alan Seales: And so I could get over all the rest of the stuff.

[18:44] Mike Abrams: And then the ending came.

[18:48] Alan Seales: And I remember very vividly, because you and I both looked at each other in the theater with this kind of WTF moment.

[18:55] Mike Abrams: There was a whole reaction across the whole audience.

[18:58] Alan Seales: And it's only the second time I've ever had this reaction in a theater.

[19:01] Mike Abrams: The first time being when I saw Lord of the Rings, the third part, where that movie also ignored the logical ending point and went for like 45 more minutes.

[19:13] Alan Seales: And this was the second time where this musical ends with Grizabella ascending to the Heaviside Lair.

[19:21] Mike Abrams: But this movie did not end there.

[19:24] Alan Seales: And I kind of want to just leave it at that.

[19:27] Mike Abrams: Because if you're not going to see the movie, then I'm happy to tell you what you experience at the end.

[19:34] Alan Seales: But if you're going to see the movie, I don't want to ruin it for you.

[19:38] Mike Abrams: Because it's such an odd and, in my opinion, wrong, but wrong in a way that I didn't even mark this as a dislike because it was so much of a dislike that it became a little bit of a like.

[19:48] Alan Seales: Because the experience got so much funnier for me.

[19:52] Mike Abrams: And I just kept thinking about who – like the only thing I can think of is this was the 36th hour that Tom Hooper was saying he was cutting.

[20:02] Alan Seales: And he's just like, let's just keep it. Let's keep it in.

[20:04] Mike Abrams: We got to go put this on the show to the premiere tonight.

[20:07] Alan Seales: It's in an hour. Let's just keep the ending.

[20:09] Mike Abrams: Versus just ending with Grizabella ascending.

[20:12] Alan Seales: It took me so out of the moment because it was just so like 180 of what we had just been watching for the previous 90 minutes.

[20:22] Mike Abrams: And yeah, I agree. I agree. It didn't fit. It was not the natural ending.

[20:28] Alan Seales: And then there was actually even another part where I was like, okay, now this is the ending.

[20:33] Mike Abrams: And then it kept going again.

[20:35] Alan Seales: It is – there are three distinct times in that ending where you think it should and it cuts back to the awkward part.

[20:46] Mike Abrams: And it happens three full times.

[20:48] Alan Seales: And it's a good ten minutes more at least.

[20:53] Mike Abrams: It probably was like two, but it just felt like ten.

[20:56] Alan Seales: It felt like another hour.

[21:01] Alan Seales: I really do think when you go see this movie, you're gonna have the same moment. It's gonna be the most memorable thing you see. Memorable. Memorable. And that includes more memorable than memory. So, I want to leave us at that. And I want to go to do some categories. Some CAT-egories. Before I do that, I want to take a quick break and acknowledge my sponsors. Because we've made it through this entire season. We haven't had the ad breaks that I've wanted. And so, I want to read a few ads from a few companies that have sponsored me. I'm legally obligated to tell you that none of these companies have actually sponsored the podcast. And one of these companies might not be real. But, I want to read some ads for you.

So first up is Amazon Prime. Have you read T.S. Eliot's poems? Have you seen the 1998 CATS musical on DVD? Do you need to watch the new CATS movie, which will definitely be heading to DVD very fast? You can do all these things on Amazon Prime. Plus, coming soon, the marvelous Mrs. Mistoffelees. Sign up today to watch. CATStrology.com, your one-stop shop for your CATS astrology sign. Have you ever wondered why your cat is a little bit of a dick? Is it because you named him a cavity? Or because he's a Taurus? We have the answer. Visit us online at KnowYourCat.com or CATStrology.com and learn all about them. Find the next 24 hours and we'll throw in a breakdown of the moon that Grizabella pretends to fly to at the end of the show.

And last but not least, the Broadway Podcast Network. For some reason, the Broadway Podcast Network gave me a microphone and asked me to talk about CATS the musical. No one, myself included, thought this would be a good idea. But here I am, clawing my way to the top of the podcasting world. I'm currently the number one-ranked parody podcast about CATS the musical for listeners in the state of Indiana. If CATS isn't for you, you probably shouldn't be listening to me at this point. If CATS isn't for you, you probably shouldn't be listening to me anyways. But you should check out some of the other amazing Broadway Podcast Network podcasts. The Broadway Podcast Network has incredible shows like Carrie Butler's Breaking Broadway, You Can't Say That with Tanya Pinkins, A Broadway with Brittany Bigelow, The Theater Podcast with Alan Seales, our special guest today, Broadwaysted, The Fabulous Invalid, Josh Swallow's Broadway, and many more. Find out more at broadwaypodcastnetwork.com.

[23:24] Alan Seales: And welcome back. It's now time for our award categories. So, Alan, I've got a few awards I want to give. And we'll have some nominations and you can tell me who you think wins. The first one I want to nominate is the I Treated a Multi-Million Dollar Movie Project Like a Junior High School Science Project Award. And the nominees are Tom Hooper, Tom Hooper, or Tom Hooper. Who do you think the winner is?

[23:49] Mike Abrams: Oh, this is a tough choice. I think I'm going to have to go with Tom Hooper.

[23:53] Alan Seales: I agree. And congratulations, Tom Hooper, for admitting that you stayed up 36 hours straight to finish the movie hours before the premiere, just like every kid finishes their science project in junior high. I can't believe you finished a $95 million budgeted movie hours before the premiere. I'm like, I'm proud. I'm actually very proud. Because that's incredible. That gives me... that actually helps me with my imposter syndrome. Because if someone is willing to give somebody $95 million who procrastinates in the same way that I do, then I'm in good company. Or they're in good company. Either way. Yeah, it's... kudos. Kudos to you, Tom.

[24:30] Alan Seales: Okay, the next award is for the Let Me Show You How Small These Cats Actually Are Award. And that's for the Best Unnecessary Set Piece to Try to Scale the Cats. So the nominees are... There's a 20-foot door that pops up a couple times. There's an entire scene with Jenny AnyDots where she is in her home and it's a kitchen. And so there's a ton of kitchen props. And then the last nominee is the Mungo, Jerry, and Rumpel teaser scene where they break into a house. So they start in a bedroom and go into a dining room and wreak havoc on this entire home.

[25:06] Mike Abrams: I will have to go with Rumpel and Mungo because Victoria's with them and comes out with a ring she's wearing as a bracelet. A human ring that she's wearing as a cat bracelet.

[25:19] Alan Seales: That's a good one. The reason that they were the winner for me is because when they get to the dining room table, they sit on the chair and they hold a fork and knife that's bigger than they are. And that was the one where I was just like, Alright, we get it. They're tiny. Let's move on. At that point, I was also still angry because that wasn't the song that I wanted to hear. Congratulations Mungo and Rumpel Teaser for winning this award.

[25:42] Mike Abrams: The third award goes for what I'm calling the Luke P. Bachelor edit, which is the award for, if you don't get that reference, that's for the character that got the worst edit in the movie. And so the nominees for this are the straight and nerdy Mr. Mistoffelees, Skimbleshanks being a tap dancer, Jenny Anydots being her comedic lazy, or Macavity who kind of got an extra edit with the way he goes in and out of all the scenes.

[26:11] Alan Seales: I think my top choice is Jenny Anydots simply because there were too many gratuitous comedic slapstick moments where she just tried to jump and was fat and hit a wall and fell. Like that, just do it once. Okay. Five times. I'm good. And a lot of cat puns, like cat got your tongue.

[26:35] Mike Abrams: Oh yeah, that was too meta for me. She should not know cat puns. I still think the worst edit goes to Mr. Mistoffelees, which we covered earlier so I don't want to get back into it. It's still, you know, I'm 24 hours later and I'm still mad about it. Besides the ending, it's the part that bothered me most about this whole movie. And so that would be my Luke P. Bachelor edit award.

[26:59] Alan Seales: And the last award we have to give is the Wow, that person saw something different than I did award. And I'm going to give that to the person who enjoyed the movie the most. And so this is going to be groups of people. So my nominees are going to be, do you think diehard Cats fans, overall Broadway enthusiasts, or people who attend this movie with no knowledge but an altered state of mind?

[27:24] Mike Abrams: Ooh, ooh, this is a tough one. I seriously think that it's going to be theater, Broadway nerds, not nerds, nerds in a good way. Lovers of Andrew Lloyd Webber, lovers of the show, who are going to come and no matter who sings it or where it's performed, they love the music. It brings back some nostalgia. It brings back memories. And this makes them feel overall good. So I'm going to go with Cats lovers and enthusiasts. I think they are going to enjoy it. And I think anybody who has seen the musical ever, you kind of got the WTF moments out of the way in the theater. And so I think those people are going to like it but have some criticisms, especially the last two to 25 minutes. I do think someone who comes in an altered state of mind are going to really love this because there were a couple people in our theater that were laughing at all these points that should not have had people laughing.

And the whole time I kept thinking, I wish I was as happy as those people in this movie. And so that makes me think that they likely made a decision that they're going to be very happy with when they debrief about this movie with their friends later.

[28:43] Alan Seales: So the final question, which is, how would you rate this movie on a scale of 1 to 9 Cat Lives?

[28:50] Mike Abrams: You're asking me?

[28:51] Alan Seales: I'm asking you. You're going to rate first.

[28:53] Mike Abrams: Oh, goodness. I graded Chuck and Larry an A-, so we all know where I'm going. So what is the equivalent of an A- in Cat Lives?

[29:00] Alan Seales: Like an 8?

[29:01] Mike Abrams: It would be like an 8. Okay. So for me, it gets major points for the technology. I liked the orchestrations, and the cast was good, even though underutilized, the cast was good. So I'd give this maybe a 4 1⁄2 Cats.

[29:23] Alan Seales: Wow. Generous.

[29:25] Mike Abrams: I'm giving it 3 Cats. I'm giving it 3 Cats because it's one cat for each time the ending cut back to this awkward moment that made me unsure of what I was watching for the last few minutes. And I feel like that's the only way to grade it, is to grade it off of that ending and give it 3 Cats based off of the three cutbacks to that particular moment.

[29:47] Alan Seales: Well, thank you, Alan, for joining and for listeners, for enjoying this special bonus of The Wrong Cat Died, the podcast breakdown of The Cat's Atrophy. I highly recommend going to see the Cats movie, which is in theaters everywhere on Friday, December 20th, 2019. Bring your friends, family, but don't bring your children, even though this is PG. I've said that many times, and I want to stick to that. Please do not bring your children. It will haunt their nightmares. But, Alan, thank you. And how can we catch your podcast?

[30:17] Alan Seales: You can find me on the Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm slash ttp. If you had strong opinions about the movie, I would love to hear from you, whether you loved it, thought it was the best movie ever made, whether you thought it was the worst thing you've ever seen in your life, or anything in between. I'd love to hear about that. I'd love to hear about your thoughts on the ending. Please let me know your thoughts. Either send me a direct message on Instagram at TheWrongCatDied or email me at TheWrongCatDied at gmail.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts, your takes on the movie. And if you have a very groundbreaking or good hot take, you'll have a chance to hopefully be on a future bonus episode where maybe we will be discussing this movie in further detail with former cast members and hopefully maybe some movie cast members, if you know any.

And if you are posting any of your reactions, don't forget to tag me at TheWrongCatDied on Instagram and I will share them and post some of my favorites to the followers. To follow along, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at TheWrongCatDied or check out our website, TheWrongCatDied.com.