Sundance premiere ‘Cat Person’ a cinematic litter box serving cheap ‘thrills’

PARK CITY, Utah — The film “Cat Particular person,” which premiered Saturday on the Sundance Movie Pageant, ought to be referred to as “Camp Particular person.”

As a result of gone is the deceptively easy, resonant, viral New Yorker quick story in regards to the pitfalls of relationship within the age of the web that touched a cultural nerve in 2017, and as a replacement is a thriller so clownish and ridiculous that early on Isabella Rossellini delivers a dramatic monologue about how a male ant will die after it mates with the colony’s queen. It’s straight outta “Dying Turns into Her.”

Later, the primary character is compelled by her mom (Hope Davis) to carry out a sexualized, creepy song-and-dance rendition of Marilyn Monroe’s “My Coronary heart Belongs To Daddy” for her step father’s sixtieth birthday.

In the long run, blood is shed.  

If all this bombastic litter had been so clumsily shoved into Kristen Roupenian’s written piece, no person would have been speaking about it. The film is a cinematic litter field.

Emilia Jones (“CODA”) performs Margot, a 20-year-old school sophomore who meets older, bearded Robert (Nicholas Braun) throughout her job at a movie show concessions stand. They flirt, in a lumbering approach, he provides her his quantity they usually start a enjoyable texting repartee. 

The digital banter continues when she returns residence for winter break, whereas the filmmakers clearly attempt to tackle offended criticism that the 2017 character’s privilege went unacknowledged by placing her in an expensive trendy manse. There — she’s wealthy!  

However when millionaire Margot’s again on campus, and she or he and Robert have their first actual date at “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Again” — which he’s obsessive about and she or he finds boring — the spark is gone in-person. He’s erratic and judgmental, if sometimes candy, and she or he retains picturing him murdering her in jokey “Household Man” cutaways.

For Robert, romance means the hands-on approach Harrison Ford treats Princess Leia in “Star Wars” and Elsa in “Indiana Jones and The Final Campaign” — one other completely belabored character add-on — and that action-star brutishness is obvious once they have intercourse. It’s awkward, crass and porn-y.

From there, a heretofore boring, unsubtle film fully loses its marbles by attaching an inexplicable ending, which boasts as a lot universality, nuance and energy as “Taken 3.” 

Margot has an out-of-body expertise whereas having cringey intercourse with Robert; I had an out-of-body expertise through the abysmal final half-hour of “Cat Particular person.” It’s the stuff of the worst bargain-bin, violent homicide films.

Even with out the laughable new materials, the addictive high quality of the quick story is misplaced in adaptation from the get-go. Robert, Margot and her Reddit-obsessed roommate Tamara (Geraldine Viswanathan) are all unbearable onscreen. Characters needn’t be likable, however part of you then ought to take pleasure in disliking them. Not right here.

Jones, nonetheless, is well-cast within the a part of a lady attempting to cover her discomfort with gags and giggles. Braun is correct on paper, however brings a bit an excessive amount of of Cousin Greg’s weirdness to Robert and none of his sparkle. The man’s purple flags at the moment are larger than those on the Olympic opening ceremony. It’s arduous to consider Margot would stick round for any of this nonsense.

Director Susanna Fogel is expert with constructing the stress {that a} scary thriller necessitates. However the bigger query is whether or not “Cat Particular person” ought to have been was a cheapo thriller in any respect.