Cats Don't Dance

Danny is a young cat who arrives in Hollywood from Indiana certain he will be a star. What he finds is that in the Hollywood of 1939 animal performers only bark, meow and stand at the back. The only star with lines is a child actress called Darla Dimple, and she is vicious off camera. Danny starts gathering the shut-out animal players to put on a show of their own. The film looks at the industry from inside: the problem is not talent but who gets cast. As the subject of a cartoon, the exclusions of the studio system make for surprisingly hard material. Mark Dindal's first feature. Randy Newman wrote the songs. Gene Kelly served as choreography consultant, his last work on a film before his death in 1996, and the picture is dedicated to him. By Dindal's account Kelly did not demonstrate steps so much as talk about how musicals used to be thought through. It is the only full animated feature Turner Feature Animation completed. Time Warner and Turner merged during production, the studio was folded into Warner, and the film went out with no promotion: against a thirty-two million dollar budget it took about three and a half million domestically. Who it is for: anyone who likes classic Hollywood musical references and hand-drawn animation. Who it is not for: anyone looking for depth. The characters are thin, the running time short, and the villain plays one note.