Complex Numbers

Heresy

What the hell. Another JAFBG entry. Warning: This entry contains heresy.

Share a controversial opinion...if you dare.

I have loads of controversial opinions. Hell, I've even shared some of them here before. I have noticed, though, that certain controversial opinions are more than just controversial, but will get the holder of the opinion blacklisted (I believe the current term is "cancelled," but as always, I can't remember whether that has one L or two in the US) from social life.

For example, if you say "women shouldn't breast-feed their kids in public," my gods, you will be descended upon in a manner normally reserved for God's judgment upon the Egyptians.

I'm not saying that, by the way, just making a point. I mean, other opinions like "abortion should [not] be legal" might just get you into an argument, but the above will lead to your flesh being ripped from your skeleton and fed to a marauding pack of rabid hyenas.

There are other opinions that'll get you instantly labeled as a racist or *-phobe. Which is stupid, because -phobia implies fear or maybe hatred. Words mean something, you know. You can be against something without fearing (or hating) it. For instance, I have a healthy respect for venomous snakes and don't want one in the house. This doesn't make me ophidiophobic; it just means I don't want a venomous snake in my fucking house. You can also hate something without fearing it, or fear something without hating it. Like, I hate vertical video; I'm not in the least bit frightened of it. I would experience fear if someone pointed a gun at me; I don't hate guns or the person holding one. Excluding situations where the gun-pointer also happens to be someone I happen to hate for other reasons, but right now I can't think of anyone I truly hate. Banks, sure. Cable companies. But not individuals..

But I digress. Here's the actual controversial opinion I'm going to share. Again, heresy warning:

Cats was a good movie.

Look, I'm not saying it was a great movie. But in my opinion (which is, after all, what this is all about), it doesn't deserve nearly the disapprobation that has been heaped upon it.

I went into the movie (late 2019, in the Before Time) as a lark, expecting a giant pile of steaming fresh litter box deposits because that's all anyone was saying about it. Keep in mind I'd seen the stage play it was based on. Twice. Once in DC, once on actual Broadway. But both were long enough ago that I couldn't really give any kind of opinion on how true the movie was to the musical. I guess I recognized the music, and the main catrachers (I don't know if that pun is going to work or not). I thought it was well-acted, with excellent set design, but with hit-or-miss CGI. It doesn't have much of a plot, sure, but neither did the play -- which, I will remind everyone, was an adaptation of a poetry collection by TS Eliot, and the paper-thin plot is the result of ALW going "okay, how can we tie these dispurrate poetic character sketches together?" Weber, like most producers of musicals, was more concerned with spectacle, meowsic, and theatrical trickery than minor details like plot. And that's okay. It's a feature of the genre, not a bug.

My point being that I genuinely enjoyed it, though I wouldn't call it one of my favorite movies. I think it helps that I'm relatively unaffected by the uncanny valley   effect, where things that look almost human freak people out way more than things that look completely human or completely nonhuman. But I'm aware enough of it to know that the movie's characters resided deep in the Uncanny Valley. Not human. Not cat. Not even Khajiit  . Some unholy genetic splice thereof. That, in my estimation, is part of what gave so many viewers a visceral, negative reaction.

A phobia, if you will.

There are also darkly humorous elements in the movie, something that I find pleasing in My sight but a lot of people don't. Dark humor is like food: not everyone gets it.

So there it is: an unpopular, against-the-consensus, controversial opinion, but hopefully not one that will lead to a plague of locusts descending upon me to devour my flesh.

Since I'm home again, I decided to return to my weekly Alamo Drafthouse visits. I could have seen Black Widow, but that will be around for a few weeks, while the movie I chose to see was having its final showing at the Alamo. So I wanted to catch it before I had to stream it, which I probably wouldn't have bothered to do.

One-Sentence Movie Review: In The Heights

Almost as good a musical as Cats.

Rating: 3.5/5