Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Todd van der Heyden to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including the end of the road for the Skywalker Saga, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” the weirdest movie of the year, “Cats” and “Bombshell,” featuring Charlize Theron as Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk the new movies coming to theatres including “Cats,” the weirdest movie of the year, the lightsaber action of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and “Bombshell,” the inside story of Gretchen Carlson’s sexual harassment suit against Roger Ailes.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest and most interesting movies! This week Richard looks at the conclusion of everybody’s favourite space opera, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” “Cats,” starring a collection of half human-half cat rejects from The Island of Dr. Moreau and “Bombshell,” the inside story of sexual harassment at Fox News.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the final instalment of the Skywalker Saga, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” and the weirdest movie of the year, “Cats.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Cats,” the mega-musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and based on T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” has had nine lives.
Opening in London’s West End in 1981, it ran for 21 years and 8,949 performances, while the Broadway production ran for 18 years and 7,485 performances. It has played in over 30 countries in 15 languages and has been seen by more than 73 million people worldwide. The showstopping hit song “Memory” has been recorded by everyone from Liberace to Barbra Streisand. It is truly a show that always lands on its feet.
Oscar-winner director Tom Hooper puts out the litter box one more time in an all-star film that tells the tale of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles. The all-star cast, including James Corden, Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift and Rebel Wilson, hidden under layers of CGI fur and whiskers, spend one-night singing and dancing as Old Deuteronomy (Dench) makes the Jellicle Choice to decide which cat will be sent to the Heaviside and reborn into a new life. The film version, with dialogue that links many of the tunes, does a better job of expressing the story but perhaps it’s best to remember that Lloyd Webber said to Hal Prince when he asked the composer if “Cats” was a political metaphor. “Are those cats Queen Victoria, Gladstone and Disraeli?’ the Broadway legend wondered. “Hal,” the composer replied, “this is just about cats.”
Let’s not pussyfoot around. “Cats” will go down in history as the weirdest studio movie of 2019. With actors who appear to have been put through the full-body Snapchat cat filter, a Ziegfeld Follies style chorus line of dancing cockroaches and felines with human hands and feet like rejects from “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” you’ll wonder if the theatre popcorn is laced with cat nip.
It’s an example of spectacle over substance. The songs are catchy, the cats swing and sway in a manner that would make Cirque du Soleil envious, but the story, such that it is, is still simply a collection of show tunes bound by theme but unconcerned with the niceties of plotting. In other words, instead of a story “Cats” is essentially a cluster of songs of introduction based on a weird, plotless collection of Eliot’s poems.
Where director Tom Hooper’s “Les Misérables” worked to downplay the musical’s theatricality, “Cats” embraces it, allowing the felines to slink about the set, part ballet, part pantomime, part cat in heart. It’s big and silly, but unfortunately the high-tech veneer of the CGI costumes and sets erases much of the charm present in the more modest stage versions. One of the movie’s highlights is one stripped of (almost) all artifice. Dame Judy stares down the camera to deliver a playful “The Ad-dressing of Cats,” which has the kind of simple, absurd fun the rest of the film lacks.
There are other not-so-bad moments. Laurie Davidson’s “The Magical Mr. Mistoffelees” has a touch of, well, magic and Taylor Swift sashays convincingly through Bombalurina’s number but while the cast works hard to sell the material but the film is so unrestrained, so in search of meaning in a story that offers up religious resurrection metaphors but not much else, that I suspect audiences will make the Jellicle Choice and go see “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” instead.
Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including the animated Yeti tale “Smallfoot” and the GED comedy “Night School” starring Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “Smallfoot’s” messages of togetherness, the pioneering life story of a famous French writer “Colette” and “My Generation,” Michael Caine’s look back at the Swingin’ Sixties.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at “Night School’s” report card, the animated Yeti’s of “Smallfoot” and “Colette’s” coming-of-age with the CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
“Smallfoot,” a new animated film starring the voices of Channing Tatum, James Corden, Zendaya, Common and LeBron James, does a flip flop on the regular Bigfoot legend. Instead of humans wondering if Sasquatches are real, in this musical fantasy it’s the ape-like Yetis who doubt the existence of humans.
Migos, voiced by Tatum, a giant white-haired Sasquatch lives, in with his clan in the Himalayas, high above the clouds. He, like all the Yetis—they look like distant cousins to Rankin & Bass’s Abominable Snowmonster of the North—believe they fell from the butt of the great sky bison, that they live on a giant ice island supported by mammoths and that a glowing sky snail illuminates their world. Their laws are literally written in stone and kept by tribal leader the Stonekeeper (Common). What they don’t believe in are humans. “Everyone knows the Smallfoot isn’t real.”
One day, while training for his new job of gongmaster—the Yeti who wakes the village every morning—he overshoots the gong and tumbles into the snowy distance where he sees—or at least thinks he sees—a Smallfoot. Excited, he rushes back to his village with the news. He is met with equal parts wonder and anger. “If Migos is saying he saw a Smallfoot,” they say, “he is saying the stone is wrong.” His heresy gets him banished but soon he connects with a secret group, the S.E.S. (Smallfoot Evidentiary Society) run by the Stonekeeper’s daughter Meechee (Zendaya). A small collection of artefacts—like a tiny toilet paper rolls they think is a “scroll of invisible wisdom”—has convinced them of the existence of humans. Together they challenge their belief system to find the truth about Smallfoot. “It’s not about tearing down old ideas,” says Meechee, “it’s about finding new ones.”
Meanwhile in a nearby mountain town a wildlife television show host Percy Patterson (Corden) sees the Yetis as a way to improve his sagging ratings. It would be the scoop of a lifetime but at what price?
“Smallfoot” feels stretched to feature length. The animation is solid, there are jokes to make young and old laugh and Migos even revives a few of Tatum’s “Magic Mike” moves. The trouble lies in the music. It feels wedged in. This isn’t a musical by any stretch but its littered with generic pop songs—and one truly nightmare inducing version of “Under Pressure”—that are nicely realized but add little to the overall experience except for a few minutes of running time.
Better are the ideas. Wedged in between the singing and slapstick are good messages about communication and authenticity—“The truth is complicated and scary,” says Meechee, “but it is better than living a lie.”—and questioning authority. “Questions lead to knowledge,” says Gwangi (LeBron James), “and knowledge is power.” It’s about acceptance, about celebrating our differences and co-existence. In troubled, divided times these are powerful messages even when delivered by a giant Yeti.
“Smallfoot” is a big splashy movie stuffed with important ideas. Unfortunately propping those ideas up is only about an hour’s worth of story padded with songs and silliness to an hour and forty minutes.
