Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Directed by: Richard Brooks

Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives

I think I saw this movie once back in high school, but I just thought it was boring as hell. It should pretty much be illegal to show movies in school, because then you connect that film with the experience of being somewhere that nobody wants to be, and if you’re one of those freaks who likes school, then you don’t want to be watching a movie, you want to be learning shit.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is about the internal problems of a rich southern family as they deal with the imminent death of their “Big Daddy” (Ives) and the bad relationship between the ex-football star (Newman) and his wife (Taylor). That’s pretty much it. People talk about their problems and there’s yelling and drinking and people say witty lines that are ignored by the person their talking to.

It’s obviously adapted from a play, because this kind of thing is really acceptable in the theater. You know, where everybody has the same “voice” and they all just talk as if it were this highly choreographed dance number, where people yell and turn around dramatically, but nobody reacts like a goddamn human to it. It’s like a soap opera with great actors, basically. That being said, I didn’t really like Elizabeth Taylor or any of the stuff she was involved in, but the scenes between Paul Newman and Burl Ives were pretty amazing. That probably made this movie worth watching. Man, Paul Newman was such a good actor.