Home Work by Julie Andrews: Review Phoebe Lupton

HOME WORK BY JULIE ANDREWS: REVIEW

AUTHOR // PHOEBE LUPTON CONTENT WARNING: Mental Health, Addiction

When I was five years old, my mum introduced me to the world of musical movies. She started with a Disney film that had me hooked from the word ‘go’. The film was Mary Poppins. There were many things about the film that enthralled me: the unbelievably catchy songs, the sense of hope and fantasy, the animated penguins in the ‘Jolly Holiday’ scene... But what cemented Mary Poppins as one of my most beloved films was Julie Andrews’ performance as the titular character. Her poise, regal presence, and soaring soprano vocals all combined to create an image of a goddess-like figure. She was someone who made you nearly fall backwards as soon as you saw her. Andrews soon became what you might call my first ‘celebrity crush’.

Throughout my life, I have tended to deify Andrews, and I know that I’m not the only one. This was until I read her second autobiography Home Work, co-written with her eldest daughter Emma Walton Hamilton. Home Work recounts Andrews’ film career in great detail. It encompasses an array of entertaining and enlightening stories of her days on set with other film stars at the time, such as Dick van Dyke, Christopher Plummer and Richard Harris. It highlights Andrews’ extraordinary résumé, which I was very much expecting to see when I began reading. What I did not expect to discover, however, were the adversities she experienced in her personal life. She gives the reader a warm, generous insight into the end of her first marriage to costume designer Tony Walton, as well as the beginning of her second marriage to deceased filmmaker Blake Edwards. She opens wide the window to her family life and the struggles she faced with being a working mother. Perhaps, most importantly, she takes us on her journey through attending therapy sessions with a psychoanalyst, which only assists in normalising mental health struggles that many of us experience.

Andrews is clearly a privileged and talented woman, who has been blessed with a career that most performers only dream of having. But, as Home Work shows, this does not make her immune to the inherent precarity of life. The book does not recount Andrews’ early life in great detail – this was the primary subject of her first autobiography Home. What we do learn, however, is that as a child she had to live through the alcoholism of both her mother and her step-father, which resulted in a tumultuous marriage. Andrews’ mother continued to struggle with her physical and mental health, which became a source of deep anxiety for Andrews later in life. In the middle of her Hollywood career, she had the added stress of watching her younger brother become addicted to drugs, something which left her feeling frustrated and helpless. Then there is her family life, which, while clearly a great joy in her life, was punctuated by the anguish of sharing Emma with her ex-husband, and by the anxiety of relocating her family considering her demands in the United States. Moreover, despite her extreme success and popularity as an actor, she was constantly plagued by ‘imposter syndrome’ throughout her career.

The beauty of reading Home Work is that in doing so, your mental construction of Andrews as a ‘perfect’ otherworldly being begins to break down. Despite the many positive, life-affirming experiences you may have, these are always countered with times of sadness and stress. Andrews is no stranger to life’s ups and downs, and it is evident from her writing that she wants people to know it. She treats her readers with empathy and courage – at times, it’s almost like you are having a conversation with her. To me, this is the perfect way to tell your story. No one lives a perfect life. Not even Mary Poppins.

cats (Or the irony of memory in A completely immemorable film): a review

AUTHOR // JAIME HOWELL

Cats, the film no-one asked for, starring a host of A-list actors as a disturbing cross-breed of 10-fingered, wedding ring-wearing felines, truly needs no further publicity. Between Jason Derulo’s claims that the production team had to CGI his generous Jason Dejewels out, director Tom Hooper’s 36-hour all-nighter to get the final product finished with one day to spare and the subsequent reissuing of the film to cinemas as a rushed gambit to correct unfinished graphics, this film has had more airtime than its titular cats who can apparently fly… or levitate?

I thought, perhaps, that in amongst all of the chaotic press surrounding Cats, the reviews following the premiere could have been too harsh on Tom Hooper and his take on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s inimitably (yes, INIMITABLY) successful stage musical. Armed with the power of positive thought and a review that had suggested this film was to become an instant cult classic because of how fantastically awful it was, à la Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, I ventured to the cinema for my go at Hooper’s magnum opus (sorry, The King’s Speech).

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind watching this film is the gloriously distressing cat-human hybrid CGI job on which the post production team settled. This subject has been talked to death, and used in review after review as a key reason for the work’s ultimate box office flop; rightly so. This is all before we get to the tapping cockroaches and singing mice (also with human faces), so it really does paint a rather upsetting image.

Putting all of this aside, I found several further reasons for Cats’ abysmal ratings (2.8 on IMDb, hello), the primary one being that there was no reason whatsoever for this musical to be made into a movie. This sounds incredibly harsh, and perhaps it is. I should preface this argument by saying that, whilst I know well the story of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s feline spectacular, I have not seen Cats onstage. Knowing the plot of the original musical, however, and seeing it adapted into the medium of film, I believe that there is absolutely nothing this transposition does to elevate or positively change the source material, in any way. All this to say, Cats would be one of the last musicals I would ever choose to adapt into a film – not at all for lack of quality, but because movies require a decent amount of world-building for their audience to fully comprehend and connect with the storyline. Cats is set in a very specific place, during a very specific and short time period, and is incredibly character-focused. This is suited to the medium of stage, but does not align with traditional film paradigms. Quite honestly, it feels like the only reason this movie was made was because studios finally had the technology to do so, and even this aspect failed them.

Not to pile on (although I think perhaps that ship sailed well before the opening number), but I also found that at no point was I ever fully invested in any character throughout the film. I couldn’t even get behind Jennifer Hudson’s character, the woeful and excommunicated Grizabella, as her stunning voice battled constantly to soar through the rivers of snot and tears the makeup department continued to pour down her face. The physical comedy of the film, brought about (on paper at least) mainly by James Corden and Rebel Wilson, was in no way a reprieve, instead bringing yet another source of intense discomfort. And let’s not even talk about what they did to our lord and saviour Sir Ian McKellan.

The final layer of icing on this shitcream cake would have to be, however, the sly attempt by Universal Studios to withdraw this absolute gem from the upcoming Academy Awards’ ‘For Your Consideration’ page. Surely this has got to be the $100 million equivalent of writing your legal theory essay drunk at 2am the morning before it’s due and trying to withdraw it from Turnitin five hours later when you’ve come back down to earth and realised it’s ten pages about body positivity instead of legal positivism. We truly must stan whoever was brazen enough to submit it in the first place (maybe the same group of people who were holding Ian McKellan hostage at the time of filming).

Cats is not the kind of film that is so bad it’s good, and nor will it, in my opinion, ever reach the status of a cult classic. Credit where it’s due, though, because this musical was always going to be an absolute shitfight to make, and Tom Hooper did his darndest best. Besides, pulling a 36-hour all-nighter to finish a huge piece of assessment? I relate to that on a spiritual level.