#cats_the_mewvie (2019)

(On TV, September 2019) I went through an entire spectrum of emotions while watching #cats_the_mewvie, but I’m not sure they’re the emotions that the filmmakers intended. As a cat owner and charter member of the non-academic web (check this web site’s copyright notice), I was intrigued by the promise of a film exploring how and why cats have become the Internet’s favourite pet, launching feline celebrities (!) and countless memes along the way. This Canadian documentary film does manage to deliver what it promises: a look at Internet-famous cats and their owners, along with shallow musings on why cats are awesome and the nature of animal Internet celebrity at an age of influencers. But it didn’t take long for my cynical nature to start poking at the film’s argument—while #cats_the_mewvie does nod in the direction of some of the cyberfelinosphere’s less savoury aspects (“I would never use my cat merely to make money” protest owners who do exactly that, but not like those people) it doesn’t spend a whole lot of time there, instead moving on to the kinds of unarguable platitudes that kill any critical thought. Yes, some people are actively chasing fame and notoriety, celebrating every dozen new followers as if it was important. It’s a treadmill without a point (as briefly acknowledged by some clips), but it’s about cats and cats are cute and that’s all we really need to know, right? Suffice to say that #cats_the_mewvie is made for popular appeal, not scholarly questioning. Still, by the end of the film we do get the usual uplifting envoi and I found myself begrudgingly conceding a few points: The point of cats on the Internet isn’t cats (which cuts both ways: cats don’t care about follower counts, but their owners do), it’s about people connecting through cats and having something cute to see as a chaser to the horrible things competing for our attention through the same app or browser window. The documentary itself is competently made, with a propulsive mixture of likable cat owners, Internet historians, cat footage, photos and screen captures. Still, as I stroked my cat (an unremarkable tabby with no special skills except being a cat–don’t expect a picture of her on any social media any time soon), I ended up thinking that #cats_the_mewvie could become an exhibit in another kind of documentary, one about our relationship with the Internet that, clearly, we still don’t have the tools or perspective to tackle yet.