Cats: A Important Social Commentary on Society

Cats+masterfully+draw+parallels+between+our+school+culture+and+cat+school+culture%2C+highlighting+the+true+nature+of+school+groups+such+as+Publications.%0A%0A%0A

Cats masterfully draw parallels between our school culture and cat school culture, highlighting the true nature of school groups such as Publications.

Joffre Zaha, Culture Editor

Cats was a massive failure when it was initially released, and my previous review of the original version of the movie still stands. But in the months that have passed since my review, Universal Pictures has updated their movie with a brand new version with updated CGI. So I truly apologize for my previous review of Cats based on the limitedly-released movie theater version. When the CGI is fixed, the Cats movie is truly one of the best films of the decade with its subliminal social commentaries on society and its ability to reach a broad range of audiences.

In the months that have passed, I’ve realized the huge mistake I made discounting the complex plot of Cats. In reality, Cats has a bigger message in mind for viewers: a warning of the bubbles we live in and a call to action for viewers to open their minds to other cultures. Take the Jellicle cats, for example. When I first watched the movie, I had no clue whatsoever as to what a Jellicle cat was. This was the ignorance Cats was trying to highlight from the very beginning. Jellicle Cats are a marginalized minority cat race within our country who live as the majority in the Cats world. To the rest of the country, Jellicle cats are just some cats on our streets. But the Cats movie shows us that these cats are more sophisticated than we think. Especially in our affluent Asian-American dominant bubble in Fremont, we see race as only between Asians, Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos, etc. We don’t see race as something that other animals can have. Cats attempts to break our preconceived notions of cats’ lifestyle and culture, changing our binary view of how cats live into a more informed, complex view of the feline world.

And to be frank, it was truly the fault of the CGI for distracting me from all the intricacies of the plot of Cats. In the updated version of the movie, the characters look much more in line with what I pictured the characters to look like in the first place. The fur on the cats seems to be much furrier in this version of the movie, and I couldn’t even notice any of the facial features of the actors, which was an obvious improvement from the first film. The characters did appear plumper, however, and I was disappointed that the producers decided to step back from fully transforming the actors into cats with their decision to make the tails on the cats limper. Nonetheless, the updated CGI of Cats made the viewing experience much more pleasant and allowed more people like me to truly understand the story of the movie while not being distracted by lackluster CGI.

So again, I deeply apologize for giving a poor review of Cats before Universal Pictures decided to update their CGI. While the theatrical release was a massive failure, the recent digital release of the movie has made me realize all the plotlines I missed in its original version. So if you do have a spare two hours free during our current quarantine, go watch Cats. You’ll come out of it a changed human.

Rating: 5/5