“Mommy, What’s Jelly Co Cat?”. A Mother Daughter Review of Cats, The…
By: Jenny Justice
Tags: Cats, Movie Review, Movies, Humor, Parenting

My 11-year old girl and I went to see Cats this afternoon. I had wanted to take her to see Little Women. She said she wanted to see Cats too because she “heard it was bad and that might be fun.” And boy, was she right. I mean, we have all heard that by now. And guess what? Both things are true. It was bad. It was fun. The universe of Cats is wide, various, and a place where all things are possible. It is a place where the vast majority of song lyrics make no sense. It is a place where size and proportion and the laws of nature, really, do not exist in any form of consistent manner. It is a place where cats wear coats sometimes, or shoes, and a place where some cats would never!

I do not mean to present this as any sort of review, because really the best reviews have already been written. I cannot top them, and will not try to. I read them voraciously when they came out and might read them again now with the newfound knowledge I have from actually being there, in the theatre, a theater of mostly sweet elderly women and a few mom and daughter pairs, and a group of college boys who were there to say they lived to tell the tale.

This is not a review. Instead, I want to present a few of the questions and answers my daughter and I had for the movie, for life, and for each other while watching the movie Cats.

Question 1: What is a Jelloco, Jellyco, cat?

This one might be a question with no answer. Just none. I tried to explain what I knew of the poem. And how trippy it is that all of this is based on a poem, something we both, of course, love but to be honest the few times I have tried reading T.S Eliot’s cats poem, I just felt dizzy with confusion and flustered about why, just why. But anyway, the thing is we tried too figure this out based just on the movie, just on the lyrics of the cat songs we could understand, and all we could come up with is that maybe it is some kind of gang? Or cult. Which makes more sense. But more on that later.

Question 2: What size are cats?

Based upon this film cats range in size. Meaning there is no way in which anything about their size makes sense. Sometimes they are smaller than forks, sometimes they are big enough to sleep like people in the beds of trains. Sometimes they dance on train tracks and look kind of big, other times, they dance on train tracks and look insanely small.

Question 3: Why do some cats have clothing?

Another mystery. Just perplexing. We have no idea. And yes, one cat takes off her cat — I guess, outer cat? And has clothing on and then more cat, but most cats sort of either are full on cat naked, aka, cats, and then other cats have huge fur coats, which is slightly disturbing yes, and still others have some kind of pants and suspender get up going on, and then two cats that we know of have on high top tennis shoes. There is no clear way to tell why the clothing matters, and of course, that sad cat that has the best songs, the songs where the lyrics make sense and can be sort of separated out from the cat-iverse and applied to life, — she has on a lot of clothing. Tons of it.

Question 4: Is this a cat cult?

This is what I have on this. I think it is. I think watching this I felt like okay, this is part Logan’s Run, part the Lottery. Because really? Really now. What is this prize. What is this ball. What is happening. It felt to me that they were all sort of excited about and trying to be the cat chosen to … well, I am just going to say it: die? To be sent to this place …heaven, heavy? The other side, really.

Question 5: What’s the deal with the names, naming, singing about names?

Again, this is a vital element to it all and I get it but there are issues and inconsistencies and also a lot of pain and suffering, lyrically, along the way. Names are important. We get this. I guess that cat who was just as confused and innocent as we all were going into this, the one thrown into the alley in a sack by the only human ever, perhaps, she had a name — Victoria, and then they sang about how her name was not a good enough name, but no one ever gave her a new name? And then tons of other cats sang about their names — and not one bit of it made sense. This we know. Gumby cat? Those jerk cats, forgot their names but what jerks. And then the bad guy cat who did magic and the good guy cat who also did magic. Which is an entirely different question with the same answer of: we do not know why, there is no answer, cats can do magic, and it is serious magic. It is make people disappear magic along with card trick magic. It is wild an various, which is what all cats are, I have now come to believe.

Question 6: I think that one cat is really a cat. She is a good cat. Who is she?

This question, I really get. Yes. We loved that cat. She was really good as a cat. What else was she in? She was great. Bravo to her.

Question 7: Why are there mean girl cats? Why?

There were some mean girl cats. Super mean. I mean we get that the one cat with all of the clothing and the best song had done some not so great things in life and she was trying to make a comeback to her old community of these Jelly cats. And then some cats, if not I guess, all of the cats, were mean and rude to her, but the pretty cat who was the best cat was great because she was great to everyone. She is the cat to be, really. A role model cat.

Question 8: Why do they have what seems like a human size town with things just for them, really small cats, and no humans around?

It was like Honey I Shrunk the Kids but with cats. They had a lot of posters about cat things and then a milk place that was human sized but where they all went and frankly got a bit too gross with the milk.

Question 9: Why train the cockroaches if you are going to eat them?

This one is random, a spoiler alert, and also a surreal sentence. But really. Why do all of this work to train bugs and give them little Broadway dancing outfits and canes and what not and then eat them while they are trying to dance? I guess from what I know of actual cats, that might be a pretty cat move, really.

Question 10: What?

Exactly. What. we do not know. It was okay. Really. I would not say it was terrible beyond measure. I would say it was interesting, it was silly, it begged you to sort of just pretend for a while, and it was sort of struck down by CGI issues and also, a general sense of well, I guess we have to live with not knowing why to a lot of things — names, places, outfits, lyrics, we just have to be okay not knowing why and appreciate the wild ride. It was really not that bad. Really. It was fun. We had a good time. Really

We have to follow the good cat and see she is super good, and we have to just let the old lady cat sing and say things that make no sense but in a profound way, such as cats are not dogs, when really, no one at all, any time, even made that assumption, but okay.

We have to just believe that the cat who won the prize maybe did not die or maybe did not fly into the sun and that she got to go to a better world and have a new life. Because I suppose in the end, that is what this film wishes for us all. We come in one way and we leave forever changed, up up and away in a chandelier that is also a hot air balloon.