The answer to the question ‘What if Neil Breen, But bad.’ finds us pawing at the front door of 2023’s ‘Baby Cat’ a film by Scott Hillman that feels like it should have been a 30-45 minute anime OVA that somehow got bloated into a 90 minute live action feature in the most horrendous ways possible.

The plot follows Dana, a recently seperated, recently fired woman who’s moved to LA to start a new job doing something with Oil fields…she isnt too sure either. The film opens with her apartment hunting, and she finds the perfect apartment, in a lovely complex, with nice neighbours all for a good price…She’s about ready to sign the deal, when we’re then introduced to Lori. a fully grown woman dressedin ‘Kawaii’ style cat girl lengerie and knee high cybergoth boots who crawls up to Dana and wraps herself around her leg.

Non of the occupiers of the complex even BEGIN to bat an eye at Lori, and when Dana raises the issue of the ‘sexy cat in the room’ they all just basically shrug it off saying ‘well thats what she does…’ it almost puts Dana off signing the lease, but when the landlady offers to knock another 250 off the rent, she bites the bullet.

And what follows is a a 10 minute window where Dana and Lori get better equainted…and eventually have sex. followed by a further 60 minutes of a vicious cycle of Dana venting to various folks about her new ‘pet play’ girlfriend, getting frustrated that Lori will only communicate in ‘meows’, having aggressive sex with Lori and going to the gym.

All the while a SECOND plot is rolling following a criminal kingpin called Qulling, who’s working with a lawyer called ‘Mr. Chance’ to try and take over the city with his brand of drug pushers and a new drug called ‘Nuke’. That…that second plot is pretty much entirely unrelated to the first plot until the final 20 minutes when both worlds unceremoniously crash into each other. with mixed to poor results.

Up front? Baby cat on a technical level is atrocious. direction feels a bit aimless, a lot of the film was ‘one man army’d’ for the most part, so I dont feel I can really say ‘Scott directed this film well’ when the only person he had to direct was himself, and maybe sometimes one other guy. Whats here is fine enough, but largely unremarkable.

His direction of the cast, is pretty solid though, he clearly worked with the cast to really nail what he wanted out of the experience, and whether I think the performances were played out well or not is kind of a moot point, he did manage to get them to do what he wanted.

The cine, is garbage, and im being kind in saying that. 80% of the shots arnt locked off properly, arnt white balanced, the majority of the shots are shakey, and what isnt shakey is handheld and weirdly framed. the majority of shots dont follow conventional framing rules, use unecessary key frame trackings that cause the image to flail around. and thats just the basics.

The lighting is heavy handed and lacks any vision or purpose for being why it is, the greenscreen work is terrible, largely caused by the green screen itself not being appropriately lit, leading to haloing in some shots, brake in where the contrasting shadows on the screen cant be keyed out. random cuts in and out of green screen work. and the overlays the choose to insert into green screen’d sequences are often shakey, or full on move when the scene is of character being static.

Add to this the edit looks and feels rushed, scenes cut way to late, or way to early, they use scene ‘lead in’ to pad the runtime, which essentially shows our cast ‘out of character’ right before the cameras supposed to roll as they get INTO character. the colour grading layers dont match the scenes they’re layered onto, meaning sometimes they overrun into other scenes, then abruptly dissapear. text and visuals that are layered in havent had their motion keyframes checked so they fly around the screen randomly. the end credits and titles wernt formatted properly meaning they use mismatched fonts and run right out of the safety zone and off the screen entirely. When I can say confidently that ‘The Amazing Bulk’ handled its edit and green screen work better…that is a HELL of a damning endorsement.

Thats not even mentioning the script which, as mentioned gives you a 10 minute establishing of the characters and the core concepts, then gets locked into lesbian sex scenes, venting and gym trips for 60 minutes before wrapping the whole film up in an incredibly basic and very underwhelmign way. The characters are all very one note, they dont get any kind of complexity to work with and the writer seems to be teasing the audience by the second act by just…purposfully throwing away possible plot lines that could have ACTUALLY given these characters something to do other than bonk and share feelings.

I think the biggest problem with this film is that, had it been a shorter cartoon or animation, it probably would have worked. This film isnt a million miles off the kind of Shoujo Ecchi anime that plagued circles in the mid 2000s. it feels very much like one of those shows, but as with most anime. Translating it to a live action environement more often than not results in unexpected and horrifying results…and thats kind of whats happened here.

The performances are what ultimately save this production with Fawn Winters seems to really fully embrace the role and plays a duel character I feel rather well. While her line delivery isnt the most confident in the world, her physical performance and facial reactions I feel nail the part of Lori perfectly and she’s almost certainly a highlight.

Natalie Cotter is also more than enjoyable as Dana here. she doesnt get much range to play with, but she plays what she has well. and when bolstered with a strong supporting cast (including Chris Sandberg who I think is the standout performer here as the wonderfully dry delivery guy who, throughout the film continues to deliver increasingly bizarre items and telegrams to Dana) I think the performances in this one are probably the films strongest suit.

Oh! and the soundtrack is all royalty free music, the director said he just googled ‘Royalty free music – Cats’ and then used anything he could find. given the state of the edit, I’d be inclined to believe that given the scores just randomly thrown about here, there and anywhere with no care how its used, or even WHY its used…matched only by some horrendous ADR work that doesnt even match the actors mouths. The one redeeming quality? the on location and on set sound when it ISNT ADR’d is actually pretty well handled all things considered.

Its now been over 24 hours since I watched ‘Baby Cat’ for the first time, and it’s basically been all i’ve thought about for at least 16 hours of that time (a mans gotta sleep) its kind of haunting me, because I feel like somewhere in the guts of this film, is something that could be genuinely engaging, a 20-30 minute ‘short’ version of this with more care and attention put into it COULD have the potential to actually be great. But somewhere along the way, the vision for this film got bent out of shape, and it just seems to have spiralled from there. If you enjoy weird cinema, and have a strong constitution for being patient. I think you may feel like me and find moments of this film quite enjoyable. But if your ANY other way, i’d avoid this one like the plague…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/baby-cat-2023/