Review: ‘Chatty Catties’ is even worse than it sounds

In the ‘it’s so bad it’s good” sweepstakes, “Chatty Catties” has a lot going for it.

First off, it imagines a universe in which cats speak English to humans. But their mouths don’t move; the words just hum right out of them.

Then, for some reason, all the cats are voiced by deaf or hearing-impaired people, most of whom are likely not professional actors, or at least not professional voice actors. So the lines the cats say are both read poorly and so hard to understand subtitles are needed.

As for a plot, the film follows an unlikable, alcoholic, dentist’s assistant named Shelby (Megan Hensley), her miserable-but-bossy cat Leonard (voiced by John Autry II), and Shelby’s boyfriend, Nate (Matthew Grathwol). Over the course of the movie nothing much really happens, other than Shelby repeatedly drinking too much.

To liven things up, director and co-writer Pablo Valencia cuts away to random other people having conversations with their cats. These conversations are obviously supposed to be funny. They’re invariably not.

The look of the movie is amateurish beginning to end. It’s impossible to tell if any of the actors are any good because the film itself is so thoroughly awful. Megan Hensley may be the next Cate Blanchett; Cate Blanchett couldn’t do any better in a film this bad. The actors don’t stand a chance.

Neither do the cats. None of them seem at all interested in the proceedings. Well-played.

Look, cats can be cute. There’s a reason people keep sharing all those videos. But the cats here aren’t particularly cute, the jokes are pretty bad and the execution is plain dumb. Is “Chatty Catties” so bad it’s good? No, sorry, it’s just bad. Really, really bad.

Tom Long is a longtime culture critic.

@toomuchTomLong

‘Chatty Catties’

GRADE: D-

Not rated

Running time: 84 minutes