The AristoCats

• Aristogatas
• Score: 🐱🐱🐱🐱
• Duration: 79 minutes
• Release date: 1970
• Genres: Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Musical
• Cats Spotlight: Marie and Toulouse

AristoCats is my favourite Disney movie (and the only of the few Disney movies that I like at all). I remember watching it as a kid and hating that stupid butler for catnapping the poor kittens and after rewatching this year (2023) I still do! I also think that this is a highly underrated Disney movie and the only character that made it to fame was the kitten Marie that managed to be a famous stationery character.

The plot is about a white cat mom, Duchess, that lives with her three kittens, Berlioz a dark gray cat, Marie a white cat and Toulouse a ginger cat, alongside her owner a retired opera diva, Madame Adelaide Bonfamille. The Madame is filthy rich and plans with her lawyer to leave all her money to her cats when her stupid, jerk, rude butler eavesdrops and kidnaps her cats late at night to let them die in a rainstorm. Totally inadmissible, but don't worry because the cats don't get hurt (besides being drugged with sleeping pills). After this the cats befriend a ginger tomcat, O’Malley who guides them to home.

I will make this review different since I am going to cite the great and the bad points about the movie (without trying to spoil it too much). Beginning with the bad points: there is a dog duo which is totally unnecessary to the movie since they didn't even interact with the protagonists, it even felt like I was watching a novela with its many different nucleus (why they had to push a dog even in a cat themed movie?); the cats are fed with something called "Crème de la Crème à la Edgar" which I think that is milk with cream, instead of real cat food (I know I could be nitpicking but I hated bias about cats being reinforced in fiction, like cats aren't affectionate and cats drink milk while a cat shouldn't drink milk in real life).

The good points are: the movie features a mouse, Roquefort, that isn't a jerk and this feels refreshing to watch; the animation is beautiful as expected of the golden era of Disney; all the cats are cute but I'd like to highlight Marie for being such a spoiled kitten and Toulouse's hissing; the OST is also great and I also found out that Louis Armstrong almost got a role in the movie. To summarize, I recommend this movie to watch as a great cat movie.

Keanu

• Keanu: Cadê meu gato?!
• Score: 🐱
• Duration: 100 minutes
• Release date: 2016
• Genres: Action, Comedy, Crime
• Cats Spotlight: All cat actors that got Keanu's role

This movie was one of the biggest letdowns in movies for me and to explain why I'll start the review with the plot. The movie begins with the movie's title Keanu (at the time is called Iglesias) who is a pet cat of a drug-dealer guy in a drug processing factory, then two assassins kill everyone except the cat (because even assassins knows that you shouldn't hurt cats lol) then the kitten fled and appeared at the doorstep of a guy named Rell, who was dumped by his girlfriend. The kitten was then named Keanu and he was spoiled by his new owner until one day, when Keanu was alone at the house, someone broke into their house and kidnapped Keanu. So Rell alongside his cousin, Clarence, go in an adventure pretending to be gangsters so they can bring Keanu back home. And that's it.

When I was looking for cat themed movies I found this advertised as a "must watch movie for cat lovers", but it isn't. I won't make this review too long since I didn't liked the movie so I'm not going to describe everything but it barely shows Keanu (which is portrayed by 9 kittens by the way) and focus more on the relationship of the two cousins (I didn't know that are portrayed by two comedians that have their own TV show, so the movie was more their own motion picture than it was a cat movie anyway). To resume, the movie isn't anything like the rest of this list and I wouldn't recommend it.

Kedi

• Gatos
• Score: 🐱🐱🐱🐱
• Duration: 80 minutes
• Release date: 2016
• Genres: Documentary
• Cats Spotlight: Everyone

Kedi is a new favourite of mine so before going to the review I'd say that I recommend any cat person to watch it ♥ So if you want just skip the review and go watch it (the review won't be too long anyway since I liked most of the movie so I have nothing to complain about and write a rant lol).

The plot is a documentary about cats in Istanbul, Turkey. It shows different parts of the city where they interviewed different people and their relationship with cats (some of the interviewed people were cat owners themselves, some take care of the many street cats of the city and others are just cat admires). We get to see many pretty, funny and wonderful different types of cats and get to know a bit of Istanbul's cat story.

I was surprised (in a good way) that many people there really liked cats, and more than that, it was like liking cats was in their culture. The only problem that I saw is that many people didn't desexed the cats so the street cats population is big and is only going to grow more in the future. Also, my only problem with the movie was that the director changed from one scene to another too fast, during the movie, and I felt that some of the stories were left unfinished/to be continued later, but they didn't continued so some of the stories felt incomplete. But overall it's a wonderful movie and I loved it ♥

Lil Bub & Friendz

• Score: 🐱🐱
• Duration: 65 minutes
• Release date: 2013
• Genres: Biography, Documentary
• Cats Spotlight: Every famous cat featured

Lil Bub & Friendz is a rather peculiar movie which I have mixed feelings about. This movie is a documentary about the life of the Internet famous cat Lil Bub, her owner's life, other cat celebrities at the time and.. Nyan Cat? And Internet memes?

Even though I love fictional cats I have misgivings about real life celebrity cats. I feel toward the cat's owner the same way I feel towards parents who get their kids on show business: the parent is only exploiting the kid to get profit (like happens a lot). So I'd worry if the owners of Internet famous cats aren't just exploiting them for views and I have already seen before videos in which the owner was deliberately scaring the cat to get a "funny" reaction (not saying that it's the same for this movie).

The documentary tells about the story of both Lil Bub and her owner’s life, it tells how he found her (she was a stray) as the rising of her popularity and features interviews with other famous cat owners and a really weird kind of festival where people watch cat videos on an open space at night (lol). I feel bad for saying this, but I was disappointed in this movie and didn't like it. I thought I was supposed to like it because it's a cat movie but I felt it was a movie about the Internet and memes. Actually, it's the first movie about cats (that doesn't have an evil cat bias) that I didn't like, so I feel really weird berating a movie that features real life cats. So I'd rather just say that I'd recommend it (but if you like her go for it).

That Darn Cat!

• Aquele Gato Danado
• Score: 🐱🐱🐱
• Duration: 116 minutes
• Release date: 1965
• Genres: Comedy, Crime, Family, Thriller
• Cats Spotlight: DC

I found this movie after I listened to this song (it turns out the movie is based on a book that I hadn't read yet). This movie is one of the live-action Disney movies, that aren't as famous as their animation counterparts, but I still find it entertaining.

The plot is about two sisters who live alone with their pet cat, DC (or darn cat, which is a really stupid name for a cat anyway), because their parents are always traveling. The older sister works, and the younger one doesn't seem to work or study (to what I understood), and the cat has free access to the street. So one night, when patrolling his territory, he follows a bank robber that is keeping a woman hostage in a rent apartment. The woman sees the cat as an opportunity to contact the world, so she starts writing "HELP" on her wristwatch and exchanges it for the cat's collar (since she was interrupted by the kidnappers, she only managed to write "HEL").

When DC gets home later that night, the younger sister notices that he isn't wearing his pet collar and is wearing a wristwatch with something written on it. She also know about the kidnapping and she quickly understands that DC got into contact with the victim. So she went to the FBI with the watch, and an FBI agent went to work undercover into her house, to follow the cat.

I thought that the plot was interesting, though some parts of the film were too slow and dull (but I think that I may be biased, because all the 60s that I've watched until now, were a bit slow-pacing and dull). Some parts of the plot were really weird (e.g., at one point, the girl took the FBI agent to her sister's bathroom, and all her sister's underwear was hanging to dry, also a guy said that he was going to kill DC, multiple times), but the scenes with the cat were excellent! They created a charming tomcat that acts like a realistic cat. What I liked most of the movie was the cat actor (my favourite scenes are where the FBI agent tried to take the cat's "fingerprints" and he made a total mess, and when he hid under the bed and hissed at him, 100% true cat behavior).

The music is great, and I'm going to cite again my review of the movie's theme song again.

The human actors aren't all that great (maybe except the old couple and the FL's friend), but the point of watching cat movies is because of the cat actors, so it isn't a problem.

Overall, even if this movie isn't a hidden gem of Disney, it's enjoyable, and DC is the great start of it, so I give it 3 stars and recommend it.