Cats

Love this musical. Was what I expected.

I've loved this sense I was a young teen.

Never having seen the original stage production I found this version to be a good introduction to Cats, the musical. However, speaking of Blu-Ray disk one thing has to be made clear IMHO: this is clearly not HD quality video. I suspect that the role of the Blu-Ray format here is to simply accommodate things like the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, the numerous subtitle languages, the Special Features, etc.According to Wikipedia, the movie was shot in 1998 as direct-to-video and was first released to VHS. I think that alone should give us an idea of what to expect in terms of image quality.It isn't bad when it comes to the many close-ups and pick-up shots, but certainly shows graininess the rest of the time. Audio quality to me was great.The stage production seemed lavish, well choreographed and directed. The several close-ups show nuances and how much the actors lived the part.As said earlier, this is a great intro into Cats, but this video is not the complete Cats musical. According to the Wikipedia article I referred to earlier, the original stage show runs somewhere around 2 hrs 40 min. This movie version is just under 2 hrs long since it was directed for TV broadcast. According to the Wikipedia article 'The entirety of "Growltiger's Last Stand" was cut, along with parts of "The Jellicle Ball", "The Old Gumbie Cat", "Mr. Mistoffelees", "Macavity: The Mystery Cat", and "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer".Lastly, the Blu-Ray disk played well on my players, no Region issues. If you can't make it to a theater near you to see the live performance, this disk may be worth the price of admission.

After seeing a live U.S production of Cats performed in the late 90s, I don't think I ever saw a staged performance that had quite the effect on me as a child (that included performances of Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera, to boot). The setting was incredible, the costumes were elaborate, the songs were powerful, and the overall production made me think of my fuzzy companions at home in a new way for quite some time. Now an adult, I watched the film on DVD and got to experience all of those beloved components of the musical once again.As far as the movie goes, I enjoyed every song and character quirk in it, from Munkustrap's constant attention to detail to Mr. Mistofelees'.magic tricks. The casting was excellently done, with the likes of veterans Elaine Paige (Grizabella) and Sir John Mills (Gus the Theatre Cat) performing, along with Ken Page as Old Deuteronomy. Even the little-to-unknown actors like John Partridge as the sinful tom Rum Tum Tugger, the mischievous duo of Drew Varley and Jo Gibb (Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer), and Geoffrey Garratt as the ever-punctual Skimbleshanks, carried the show just as well as their seasoned contemporaries. As expected, Andrew Lloyd Webber's music is incredible and every song is a joy to listen to, especially the show-stopping renditions of "Memory" by Grizabella and Jemima.I'm a sucker for special features, and I'll say now that The Ultimate Edition provides some VERY satisfying bits on the 2nd disc. Hearing firsthand about the uphill battle that Andrew Lloyd Webber and the rest of his team had to go through to get the original Cats musical together definitely brings a greater sense of appreciation for the film and how far it came from 1981. In addition, there’s a feature on the makeup that was interesting to watch.Finally, my only gripes with the film involve the lack of "Growltiger's Last Stand" (an epic song in its own right), as well as a lack of subtitles for the movie when they were present on the special feature commentaries. I only mention subtitles because the accents/enunciation of some of the actors and a couple of the ensemble songs were a bit of a challenge to comprehend.In general, I’d recommend this for anyone, really. It’s such an entertaining musical that newcomers and lovers of musical theatre alike will be hooked on this film and enjoy the antics of the Jellicles for years to come.

This DVD has been a good world traveling companion. It's nice to fire up a couple of numbers while waiting between flights or during a flight when a full movie would just be too long. The entire cast did a fine job and met the challenge of making the transfer from stage, where you perform the whole show in sequence, to video, where they did small segments over and over. It's too bad that the people responsible for staging weren't more aggressive at continuity checking. Some of the editorial cuts that show continuity errors were probably just for shortening the piece, but some are just bad continuity from one filming of the scene to another. "Mistoffelees" suffers particularly badly, to the point that the continuity glitches are downright distracting. There are also quite a few places where the sound doesn't synch well with the players. Still, the music, choreography, makeup, and the acting are very good, and, it least for me, I've really enjoyed watching the background action more after several viewings, and the players who weren't the focus of the scene are doing fine business that supports the scene without upstaging the main action. As far as the DVD layout goes, I really feel that the chapter break for "Mistoffelees" is badly mis-set, capturing too much of the Macavity fight. I would also have set the "Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer" break slightly earlier to catch the first laugh and "shh." Regarding "Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer," it is really too bad that the big hack taken out of the middle wasn't put back in for this "ultimate" edition. Jo Gibb and Drew Varley did such a nice job with what you get to see, that I really would like to see the whole number (even if Webber didn't want to alter the cutting of the feature, it could have been included on disc 2 as a deleted scene).. You see a bit of the missing section in the excellent "Making of Cats" documentary on disc 2. The individual interviews on disc 2 are also fascinating and entertaining. The makeup sequence is also nice (it helps that the music sequence used is one of my favorites). .I would have liked to have seen more normal face/stage makeup pictures for the cast, although there are several between the documentary and the makeup sequence. As someone who never got to see "Cats" on stage, I really appreciate this DVD.

Very good

Excellent all round product and service

Love this film. Saw the live stage production and this is a beautiful DVD.

Just as I remembered when taking my daughter who is now 24!

what can i say bought it for my son he loves it