Watched: 01/15/2025
Format: Disney+
Viewing: Unknown, but probably 3rd
Director: Norman Tokar
As a kid, I found live-action Disney comedies to mostly be a grating disappointment. Teachers looking to grade papers or have a smoke or whatever would roll in the 16mm projector and thread up one of these movies and that was the middle of the day for us sometimes in elementary school.
If you want to know why Gen-X has trust issues, its because we never knew what we were getting from a 16mm film projected movie in the common area at school, while required to sit silently. And, sometimes it was something good! But much more often it was a safety film*, or - if the teachers were feeling daffy, something like The Cat From Outer Space (1978).
It's mind-boggling that a year after Star Wars, Disney's response was to put out a 108 minute sitcom about a cross-eyed cat who lands on Earth and kind of sits there hopped up on tranquilizers while name talent runs around being "funny".
The humor is the kind that was welcome on variety shows at the time, where just being kind of stupid was very welcome. I believe this was intended to appeal to kids, but... it didn't. I remember a weird mix of boredom and aggravation while watching these movies unspool and adults who should know better acted like dopes.
Look, late 1970's Disney is a bad period for the company. By then, the vision of Walt was now all but gone, and the people making decisions maybe weren't the best in the business. As a brand, it was still huge with two parks, a Disney Sunday Movie every week on TV, and animated and live-action films coming out. But quality control was an issue, and they'd struggle until Eisner came along much later.
Jamie has a soft spot in her heart for this movie as it starred a cat (what else do you need in 2nd grade, I guess) - an Abyssinian - that matched the breed that her family kept from her elementary school days til maybe 8 years ago.
As an adult, I'm just amazed that you can see how old-fashioned and out of it Disney seems by 1978 if they're putting this out to compete with things on TV - when big chunks of this movie *look* like TV and with FX that are mostly impressive because you really can't see the strings. I was genuinely stunned to see this was a 1978 release when it feels like what Disney had been making since The Parent Trap in 1961.
The movie is largely about a space cat who teams up with a hard drinking gambling addict to fix games using telekinesis, natch. The cat needs money to buy gold needed to fix the cat's spaceship.
Harry Morgan plays an angry general, McLean Stevenson the gambler, Roddy McDowell a scientist in cahoots with a criminal mastermind, Jesse White and Tom Pedi show up as racketeers, Mr. Ed's pal Alan Young shows up as a veterinarian. And our star is Ken Berry, who you know from Mama's Family. Sandy Duncan is in the movie doing her absolute best impression of my friend, Nicole. It's unnerving.
The movie kind of plods along until the end when there's an actual aerial sequence in which someone was, for absolutely real, flying a helicopter, while someone else was really flying a biplane in close proximity. Performers move between the vehicles and hang on the vehicles. It is a horror show to watch and think "people could have died for this movie". But it also means the last ten minutes of this otherwise movie are absolutely bonkers.
I will confess - I do not like this movie. I just don't. I'd describe watching it as "tedious punctuated with maybe four good bits".
*core memory is the film about "here's how you could come home and your mom is dead or dying from knife wounds or falling down the stairs, so be ready, kid". The shot of the mom reaching into soapy water where you dropped a huge knife, you stupid kid, really sticks with me
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