Harley of No Pressure No Diamonds is taking over my blog today for a movie review in honor of Shelly! Harley is Irish and awesome so I'm super excited for her posting on my blog.
It's Shelly's birthday! Shelly is kind and sweet and says "jeepers" a lot and she's not even a little bit as innocent as she looks. To celebrate the auspicious date of her birth, I've picked The Aristocats because all the cats just really remind me of Shelly.
Especially little Marie!
In case you haven't seen it, The Aristocats is a Disney movie from 1970 that's basically Lady and the Tramp with cats. All those crazy cat ladies that refused to go to Lady and the Tramp because they weren't dog people? Yeah, the Aristocats was basically made for them. Because apparently the racist Siamese cats didn't cut the mustard.
The Aristocats is set in Paris, in the house of one of those crazy ladies that you hear about on the news who leave their estates to their pets. Her pets are Duchess, a fancy white ho and her three bastard children, Marie, Berlioz and Toulouse. Their parentage is never discussed so you can only assume that they're the milkcat's by-blows.
AnyDuchessisafloozy, crazy cat lady does indeed leave her fortunes to the pets, and the butler, an imaginatively named Edgar, drugs the cats, stuffs them in a sack and takes them down to the river to drown.
The end.
Just kidding! Edgar gets attacked by dogs (for the dog-lovers in the audience), and Duchess and her kittens are left stranded in the middle of nowhere, far from their lapcat pleasures.
They then meet the hero of the story, Tramp. Sorry, no, I mean Thomas O'Malley, the alley cat (seewhattheydidthere?). He's a rapscallion if ever you saw one, all cocky and witty and generally an arrogant little tool who just wants some tail. Naturally Duchess falls for the boy-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks thing and they continue on their merry way, meeting jazz-playing cats and all sorts until they make it back to their mansion in Paris. Duchess waves a sad goodbye to Thomas because, obviously, a poor boy from the wrong side of town just won't cut it in Madame Adelaide's house of wonders. It just can't be! They're like star-crossed lovers who cross their stars on purpose. Ridiculous.
I mean, he's a STRAY!
Shocking.
Anyway, Edgar the evil butler sees the cats arriving back to the mansion and catches them again, since they are clearly about as dumb as a box of hammers. O'Malley returns with his Scat Gang (nothing to do with poo, so don't even think it) and saves them, sending Edgar off to Timbuktu in the process. He is hailed as a hero and Madame Adelaide looks past his shabby clementine exterior to the heart of gold within, welcoming him into the fold. He is written into the will, showing that crazy old people who leave their houses to their cats don't consider that there might be divorce or questions about asset division in cat futures.
In short, the moral of the story is Everybody Wants To Be A Cat, because then you don't have to do a damn thing except be fancy, sleep all day, look cute... and you get mansions and servants in return for doing fuck all.
I think we can all aspire to that.
"Shelly is not as innocent as she looks" is the theme of the month. That is so great. I love you Harley.
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