A Street Cat Named Bob

As any­one who owns either cats or dogs will know, after a long day at work there is no shame in return­ing home and talk­ing to them. But if you engage in this pat­ter, the instant thought occurs: is this just me? The silent wis­dom of an ani­mal, or our belief that they are real­ly lis­ten­ing, can be a ton­ic for despair.

A Street Cat Named Bob is the sto­ry of James Bowen, a for­mer drug addict who lived rough on the streets of Lon­don. Bob, a stray tom­cat with whom he strikes up a hap­py friend­ship, becomes his hero and redeemer, trans­form­ing the life of this one-time tran­sient. How­ev­er this film, direct­ed by Roger Spot­tis­woode, is no sac­cha­rine fairy tale. It may not sound like a child-friend­ly fable of hope and hap­pi­ness, but as with the inter­na­tion­al­ly best sell­ing mem­oir on which it’s based, it is absolute­ly that.

Trans­pos­ing this wispy tale to the big screen must have been no easy feat, but the direc­tor and lead Luke Tread­away grap­ple with the task admirably. Indeed, Treadaway’s fine cen­tral turn means that near­ly 90 min­utes of a one-sided con­ver­sa­tion with a love­able mog­gy ends up being unfea­si­bly enter­tain­ing. The film’s achilles heel, how­ev­er, is its strug­gle to be both hard-hit­ting and humor­ous. Style-wise, it’s also a mite clunky, swing­ing between seri­ous­ness to silli­ness at the drop of a hat. This unfor­tu­nate­ly soft­ens the humour and damp­ens the sense of emo­tion­al gravitas.

Dur­ing the scenes of James going through cold turkey, it’s hard to accept all this dra­mat­ic weight after we’ve just been par­ty to a comedic cat and dog chase through the Lon­don streets. In spite of its flaws, A Street Cat Named Bob remains a true-blue heart­warmer. The pas­sion at its core is pal­pa­ble and, of course, Bob purrs his way into infamy. When a love­ly lady knits him a lit­tle scarf, cute­ness lev­els can­not be con­tained. It’s a fam­i­ly film that rais­es real issues in a sen­si­tive way. And for that it should be praised.