Cats (1999)
Original price was: $19.98.$13.52Current price is: $13.52.
“Cats” opened at The Winter Garden on October 7, 1982, carrying an advance of $6.2 million, the largest in Broadway history. In 1997 it surpassed “A Chorus Line” as the longest running show in Broadway history. On September 10, 2000, after 7,485 shows and a run of nearly 18 years, the show closed – a Broadway record. For the first time ever, an Andrew Lloyd Webber show has been specially filmed and made available on video. With a star cast including Elaine Paige and Sir John Mills, and its stunning production values, Cats will no doubt set a new standard for the filming of all future musicals. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, the most famous musical of all time, first exploded onto the West End stage in 1981. ‘Memory’, one of its many classic songs, became an instant worldwide hit. Since then Cats has smashed records and conquered the world. Using the latest technology, all the excitement, thrill, romance and intimacy of this theatrical legend has been captured on screen. Breathtaking visuals and full digital sound (that has been completely re-recorded with a seventy piece orchestra) will lead you deep into the mysterious world of Cats. Cats – as you’ll never see it again – more intoxicating and magical than you could possibly imagine.
Specification: Cats (1999)
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Photos: Cats (1999)
9 reviews for Cats (1999)
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Original price was: $19.98.$13.52Current price is: $13.52.
Amazon Customer –
The DVD production was well put together. Loved the dancing choreography . After watching the Broadway production and this DVD production i understand why this musical won 2 Tony awards during their time. The music was great. But this DVD edition was missing some of the songs from the original Broadway production.
I definitely recommend purchasing this dvd
L Lund –
This is for the DVD version: I loved the VHS “Cats: The Musical” that I wore out watching. I ordered this DVD (and a Blue Ray). I’m disappointed in this DVD. It is supposed to play in NTSC 1 (U.S. and Canada) but it did’t play on the DVD in the TV with the built in DVD. It didn’t play on my laptop. It does play on our PS3, so I assume it will also play on the PS4. The picture is grainy. It is supposed to be widescreen, but the picture shows up as a smaller rectangle in our television screen with a large black border around the movie. I’m disappointed, but I do get to see the movie again. I’m glad that I didn’t give this as a gift.
Blue Ray: Not digitally remastered, but as good as my VHS copy. The wide screen fits our TV and isn’t in a black box. (Photo is of DVD version). I like the blue ray better than the DVD. It isn’t as grainy and doesn’t have the weird box around the picture.
M. Prentice –
My fiance and I had a sudden urge to watch CATS again, after having not seen it for years. I had previously seen it on VHS(!!) when my younger sister got it for Christmas. My poor fiance had forgotten about Mr Mystofeleez’s song, which was hilarious to me because he’d always been a favourite character of mine and my fiance is actually a magician of 17 years’ experience. My only complaint is that I have very poor hearing (born with moderate-severe deafness that requires hearing aids) and the DVD does not have captions, which would have greatly helped me follow the story since we couldn’t exactly crank up the volume so high the neighbours could hear it (We already got a comment from the other residents of our duplex, who were in our shared yard the day we watched it, apparently they had no idea I enjoyed musicals! They know now…) Otherwise, CATS is a very fun musical, a bit hard to follow at points, a bit strange at other points, but the cast is amazing, the story is timeless, and the camera crew’s extraordinary talent made it a DVD to treasure, and someday perhaps show my own children and spark a love of musicals in them, as well.
Debra F –
I saw the Broadway play Cats when I was in my mid teens. Seeing the new movie version on cable left a horrible taste in my mouth, so I wanted to get something with the original play that I could watch again. The first DVD I received had horrible quality. Very blurry image of Victoria, takes you to choosing a sound option and no menu. Once the DVD started, the picture would vary from pretty good, to very sharp to absolutely horrible. It would change throughout the same song back and forth. I tried watching half the DVD, but it stayed that way throughout. When I went back to Amazon and looked again at the reviews (I had remembered 5 stars), I saw that a very small percentage of people reported the same thing I was seeing. I decided to take a chance since the majority said their copy was fine, return mine and order a replacement copy. The image of Victoria was still blurry and you still didn’t go directly to the menu, but the quality of the DVD was MUCH better. There are times with certain camera angles that the image seems to have HD quality and other times the old VHS quality, but good VHS quality. I bought this when it was on sale for $5 on Amazon and it definitely was worth the money to see the original play in it’s glory. If you get a bad copy, return it for a new one and hopefully you’ll luck out like I did.
WWII Movie Lover –
Loved the stage show & heard the recent movie was not so great so when I saw this DVD of an older stage version, I bought it. Loved it!
a viewpoint –
This review is about this DVD, as I love the play CATS and I think it is the greatest musical of our time. I had trouble getting it to play and my dvd player got stuck a few times and spit it out a few times. I tried a player in another room and it finally played there, but with no widescreen option and no subtitles option. The visuals were not very sharp. But by far the worst problem was that it wasn’t true to the play. I saw CATS 11 times, including when it first opened in Boston. I also saw it in New York and Chicago. The differences are too many to list, but the biggest glaring difference is that the entire Growltiger scene is missing. I did some research and discovered they apparently failed to include it because some people were offended. Really? My wife is Asian and she saw it with me 8 of those times and it never occurred to her (or me) to be offended. When it comes to the arts, we need to stop coddling to a small minority (not an ethnic minority but a very tiny fraction of one) who always manage to be offended. In any case, if you are a CATS aficionado, this DVD is not the one.
Bethany –
Cats is such an amazing musical! My mum took me to see it when I was younger (with this original cast too) as I was obsessed with cats and I still am! The singing, the dancing, the costumes, the acting! Everything in this DVD is magical! It tells so many amazing stories about the cats. I also believe that the jellicle ball is a real thing 😉
Lazuli –
This dvd was a very poorly made copy. Let me be clear about this, I loved the musical Cats, and this review is not about the musical itself, but about the dvd. This was supposed to be a commemorative widescreen edition, and it was not.
It started on a confusing soundtrack selection screen with a very fuzzy background picture of the Victoria cat and then went straight to the regular screen movie completely skipping the menu selection screen, which only showed up after the movie. I did check and there was no widescreen option at all.
Some of the scenes were so badly copied it was painful to watch, but I stuck with it all the way through the final credits, to the bitter end. It was like watching a badly made YouTube video. A very generous estimate is that only about 25% of the movie had a clear, sharp picture, 50% was hazy, and 25% was so badly hazy it was difficult to force myself to keep watching.
What made it even worse was that, in some scenes where the camera switches from one person to another part of the stage, it would go from an extremely hazy picture to a very clear picture (or vice versa) several times like that, making it very disorientating.
I’m very disappointed in this purchase. It was meant to be a replacement for my original Cats dvd that was lost in a move. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, I don’t think it’s worth returning, and I would be embarrassed to even give away this badly made copy.
JY –
My biggest disappointment with this DVD is it has no subtitles, but that’s a minor nitpick. Overall, I loved this adaptation when it came on TV and I’d been wanting it for some time. The Growltiger storyline was left out from this version, but I didn’t care for it when I saw the play, so it’s no loss to myself. The cast are amazingly talented and they truly bring this play to life with their voices and choreography.