03-24-2020, 06:05 PM
I went to New York City and I saw Phantom of the Opera with my friend while my family went to see Cats. They hated it. I've seen the stage production on film since then and I appreciate aspects of it, especially the music which was generally nice aside from the occasional obnoxious song. Memory is a beautiful song. The costumes, while creepy, were very interesting, and I liked the stage design. But it is so boring. There is no storyline, it's all just dance numbers with lyrics from the poems in T.S. Eliot's book to introduce each cat. The story only moves at the beginning and end. Not my thing at all, but very interesting from an artistic standpoint.
I have no idea what went on with the art direction in the movie. It is beyond gaudy and for some reason very blingy. It just comes off as tacky. I don't know what they were going for. And that's not even mentioning the horrifying cgi on the “cats.†Why didn't they just adapt the stage costumes to film? The whole point with those is the costumes don't look like real cats but instead focus on the characters with added cat-like elements (I'm talking about the original broadway/London costumes. I think they've changed when the show got rebooted, and not for the better). The cgi went too far into the real cat realm and lost all art that went into the interesting designs of the stage costumes.
So... I don't like it on stage, but from an artistic standpoint it's interesting, and as someone who admires costume design and stage design I respect it. The film is a disaster. It loses all artistic touches the stage production had in favor of tacky bling (why?) and disturbingly literal cats (why?!). Terrible.
I have no idea what went on with the art direction in the movie. It is beyond gaudy and for some reason very blingy. It just comes off as tacky. I don't know what they were going for. And that's not even mentioning the horrifying cgi on the “cats.†Why didn't they just adapt the stage costumes to film? The whole point with those is the costumes don't look like real cats but instead focus on the characters with added cat-like elements (I'm talking about the original broadway/London costumes. I think they've changed when the show got rebooted, and not for the better). The cgi went too far into the real cat realm and lost all art that went into the interesting designs of the stage costumes.
So... I don't like it on stage, but from an artistic standpoint it's interesting, and as someone who admires costume design and stage design I respect it. The film is a disaster. It loses all artistic touches the stage production had in favor of tacky bling (why?) and disturbingly literal cats (why?!). Terrible.