cats the musical movie reviews

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors.

Now streaming on:

In 1939, T.S. Eliot published a book called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats , filled with poems he had written about cats to amuse his godchildren. A far cry from  The Waste Land , almost 20 years before, Eliot's poems are sweet and sneakily profound, detailing different kinds of cats, their behaviors, personalities, and mysterious self-involvement.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name.

Andrew Lloyd Webber took these poems, wove them together loosely, initially envisioning it as a concert or a chamber piece. Nobody saw the smash hit coming. How could you predict something like "Cats"' success? You couldn't. After a triumphant run in London, it moved to Broadway, where it promptly smashed every record in the book, becoming the fourth-longest running show in Broadway history. The appeal of the show is somewhat mysterious to me (and I've seen it twice. It was the second Broadway show I saw as a child), but obviously throngs of audiences have thrilled to it. Tom Hooper ("Les Miserables," " The King's Speech ") has brought "Cats" to the screen, not doing much to it (what's to be done, really?), and over-producing much of it (the sets feel self-consciously referential, almost to the point of irony, but not quite). He casts some big names like Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson , and fills it out with lesser-known performers, as well as an enchanting newcomer named Francesca Hayward , a principal ballerina at the Royal Ballet, who plays " Victoria ," the wide-eyed innocent cat thrust into a strange new world.

"Cats" features grown humans crawling around in furry suits pretending to be cats. There are some who will find this unbearably silly. Embarrassing even. I suggest these people never take an acting class or a movement class. They wouldn't last five minutes! "Cats" has a lot of issues, issues also present in the theatrical production (which didn't seem to matter to the audiences who flocked to it for 18 years). The story is thin, to say the least. There's almost no conflict. The structure of Cats is basically a talent show for cats, where the prize is a trip to the "Heavyside Layer" (i.e. "Heaven"), a place where the chosen cat moves on to the next of their (presumably) nine lives. It's a resurrection fantasy, a dream of cleansing and purification (all things which T.S. Eliot had very strong feelings about).

In the opening sequence, Victoria, abandoned by her owners, is taken under the collective wing of the gang of street cats known as "Jellicle cats." They sing a song explaining "Jellicle cats," but since the lyrics are almost totally incomprehensible during all the group numbers (a problem throughout, and it's inexcusable), it's hard to get a line on what is going on. Different cats take the spotlight, and perform a number about who they are. "Jennyanydots" ( Rebel Wilson ) is a lazy tabby who wreaks havoc at night. "Bustopher Jones" ( James Corden ) is a street cat decked out in tail-coat and spats. "Mr. Mistoffelees" ( Laurie Davidson ) does magic tricks. "Skimbleshanks" ( Steven McRae ) commandeers railway cars with the power of his tap-dancing. 

Over all of this jazz-hands talent-show activity looms the there-and-not-there Macavity ( Idris Elba ), perched on the tops of buildings like an ominous bat-signal. Macavity shows up to wreck everybody else's "act," for no discernible reason (he's got Iago's "motiveless Malignity," to quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge). Taylor Swift plays Bombalurina, Macavity's gun moll sidekick. Many of the cats do their number and are never seen again. "Old Deuteronomy" ( Judi Dench ) is the wise elder cat, and the master of ceremonies. (A nice callback: Judi Dench was cast in the original London production, in the dual role of Grizabella and Jennyanydots. In fact, Trevor Nunn refused to come on board as director unless Dench was cast. Dench dropped out at the last minute, after snapping her Achilles tendon. Her appearance here has a lot of resonance for those who know the history.) 

The central figure, besides Victoria, is Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson), a bedraggled cat who's the "Delta Dawn" of the cat world, shunned by the rest of the cats for her disreputable past. Grizabella sings "Memory," a show-stopping song based (loosely), on Eliot's poem Rhapsody on a Windy Night . It's a song about memory and moonlight and ... honestly, I get a little lost, trying to follow what she's so upset about. But the song is about the music, not the words: it's written for a major voice, with its slow build and thrilling finish. (I saw Betty Buckley do it, and the entire audience practically seized up when she hit those notes on "Tooouch meeeeee!"). Hudson does not disappoint, filling the lyrics with rage and pathos. (Watch what she does with "I must wait for the sunrise." Hudson's Grizabella is pissed  when she sings that. Hudson makes sense of her character, personalizes the character, and sings the hell out of the song, all while wearing a cat suit. That's a pro.)

"Cats" suffers from a problem common in contemporary filmed musicals. The musical doesn't trust the audience, doesn't trust that the dancing in and of itself is exciting enough to hold our interest. There are all these dance numbers in "Cats," and Hooper spends so much time cutting around, changing angles, flying up to the ceiling, manipulating the images. You're denied the sense of sustained movement, denied the simple pleasure of watching dancers dance. If you go back and watch musicals in the 1930s, it's instantly clear how much we have lost. You are allowed to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers create the dance together, in real time. The camera follows them. The takes are long. There are only a couple of sustained shots in "Cats," and they stand out for the pleasure they bring. There's one moment where Hayward pirouettes in a large circle around the room, and the camera follows her, and it's a lyrical moment of graceful fluid movement. She's allowed to do the beautiful thing she knows how to do, and we're privileged enough to watch.

There's not nearly enough of that in "Cats," but I enjoyed the film for what it is. It's "London's Got Talent" for the feline set.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

Now playing

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

Peter sobczynski.

The Secret Art of Human Flight

Monica castillo.

The Nature of Love

Peyton robinson.

Simon Abrams

The Instigators

Robert daniels.

Tomris Laffly

Film credits.

Cats (2019)

Rated PG for some rude and suggestive humor.

110 minutes

Francesca Hayward as Victoria

James Corden as Bustopher Jones

Judi Dench as Deuteronomy

Jason Derulo as Rum Tum Tugger

Idris Elba as Macavity

Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella

Ian McKellen as Gus the Theater Cat

Taylor Swift as Bombalurina

Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots

Laurie Davidson as Mr. Mistoffelees

Mette Towley as Jemima

Robert Fairchild as Munkustrap

Steven McRae as Skimbleshanks

Ray Winstone as Growltiger

Larry Bourgeois as Plato

Laurent Bourgeois as Socrates

Zizi Strallen as Tantomile

Eric Underwood as Admetus

Melissa Madden-Gray as Griddlebone

Writer (poetry collection "Old Possum's Books of Practical Cats")

Writer (musical).

• Andrew Lloyd Webber

Cinematographer

• Christopher Ross
• Melanie Oliver

Latest blog posts

The Texture of Night: How Collateral Revolutionized Movies

SDCC 2024: Activations, Apes and Other Animals

Short Films in Focus: Welcome to the Enclave

I Saw the Sixth Sense Knowing the Big Twist, and Loved It Anyway

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘cats’: film review.

A starry ensemble that includes Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, James Corden, Jennifer Hudson, Idris Elba, Taylor Swift and Rebel Wilson turns feline in Tom Hooper's film of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical 'Cats.'

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

A pair of dance stars new to feature films sat near me with their entourage at the New York premiere of Cats , and when they first appeared onscreen, one of them whooped loudly, with what sounded like hilarity, amazement and shock combined: “Oh, we look crazy!” It was a more forgiving version of the reaction that followed when the movie’s trailer dropped in July, pretty much breaking the internet and sparking full-blown WTF? hysteria on Twitter.

Director Tom Hooper has said in interviews that the extreme social-media response to the first images from his all-star big-screen treatment of the 1981 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical was helpful in modifying the look of the feline characters, particularly since the CG work was still incomplete at that time. But if you recoiled back then at the sight of British acting royalty with their faces stuck onto little furry bodies, or even just the jarring image of cats with human breasts, chances are you’ll still be covering your eyes and peering in a profoundly disturbed state through the gaps between your fingers at the finished film. At least until boredom sets in.

Release date: Dec 20, 2019

This Universal release from Working Title and Amblin is hobbled by a major misjudgment in its central visual concept. Once the idea of making Cats as an animated feature was rejected, there presumably were multiple tests to figure out a digital approach to rendering the pusses onscreen. It’s almost unfathomable that this one made it through all the preliminary production meetings without someone sensibly calling a halt to the process by saying, “Wait a minute, those kitties are damn creepy!”

And let’s not even get started on the tiny mice with human faces, or the dancing cockroaches, yes, which also serve as crunchy snacks for Rebel Wilson ‘s Jennyanydots, a zaftig cat with showbiz aspirations who milks strained laughs from countless chunky-girl pratfalls.

In addition to the generally off-putting appearance of the cats, the proportions are all wrong with respect to their surrounding environment. Sometimes they go from appearing minuscule to giant-size within the same scene. And when Hamilton choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler assembles much of the large ensemble in the dance number that officially kicks off the Jellicle Ball (more about that in a minute), they just look like hairy naked humans wearing cat ears. In fact, that interlude made me think of a hirsute equivalent of the frantic volcano opener from Goddess , the Vegas revue in Showgirls . It’s very busy.

The misconceived movie musical that more frequently comes to mind, however, is Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz , a 1978 blunder that shares this film’s stubbornly unmagical handle on fantasy material, along with its overproduced bloat and lurid palette — although Cats arguably has the edge in aesthetic ugliness. Small children might go for its glittery paint-box visuals and freakish anthropomorphic animals. But if you’re among the millions who have always been perplexed by the popularity of Lloyd Webber’s musical behemoth, this film will not solve that puzzle.

As always, Cats is virtually plotless, more like a Ziegfeld Follies -type revue with a series of thinly connected specialty numbers than a narrative that invites much involvement. Cobbled together by Lloyd Webber and original stage director Trevor Nunn from the T.S. Eliot poetry collection  Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , the musical gives new meaning to the word “twee.” The screenplay by Hooper and Lee Hall has only heightened that.

The tribe of cats known as the Jellicles gather for their annual ball, where their wise elder, Old Deuteronomy, will choose the most deserving of them to ascend to the feline heaven known as the Heaviside Layer and be reborn. Old Deut gets a gender switch here to allow for Judi Dench to ply her twinkly-eyed beneficence; her entrance along the cobblestones, bathed in moonlight, makes her look like a golden yeti.

In addition to Wilson’s Jennyanydots, participants at the ball include Ian McKellen ‘s ragged Gus the Theatre Cat, who laments his younger days of thespian glory along with the lack of proper training in today’s unskilled kittens; James Corden ‘s Bustopher Jones, a gluttonous cat about town who’s basically a walking fat joke; Jason Derulo ‘s Rum Tum Tugger, a vain showoff whose song is one of three tracks given an assist from funkmeister Nile Rodgers; mischievous cat-burglar duo Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer (my autocorrect is going nuts with these names), played by Danny Collins and Naoimh Morgan; and Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, blessed with mad tap-dance skills thanks to Royal Ballet principal Steven McRae.

Related Stories

Taylor swift debuts original 'cats' song "beautiful ghosts".

Also from the Royal Ballet is Francesca Hayward, making a charming screen debut as Victoria, a young cat dumped out of a speeding vehicle, who quickly overcomes her fear and finds a sense of community among the wacky Jellicles.

Hissing from the sidelines and regularly disappearing in a puff of smoke while plotting to eliminate all competition for afterlife promotion is the treacherous outlaw Macavity. In a tribute to his wicked ways sung by Bombalurina (Taylor Swift), his slinky partner in crime, Macavity is identified as a ginger cat, though just to confuse matters even more in a movie with scant regard for coherence, Idris Elba tosses off his outer pimp-daddy furs and shimmies in a velvety chocolate-brown body-hugging hair-suit. (Costumer Paco Delgado should think about marketing those for the club kids.) Macavity also has scary green zombie eyes that kept making me think (OK, hope) he was going to unleash some kind of cat-slasher craziness — making this a legit horror movie instead of an accidental one.

The biggest drag in the seemingly endless series of featured felines is Grizabella, the so-called Glamour Cat, whose youthful beauty has given way to mange, causing her to be shunned by the Jellicles. Jennifer Hudson tirelessly over-emotes in the role; she limps around hemorrhaging snot and looking either miserable or terrified, like she’s been watching the dailies. She blubbers her way through “Memory,” letting loose all her considerable lung power for the big-ass key change on the phrase “Touch me.” Cue wild cheers from an audience primed on American Idol overkill. I can only hope Broadway’s original Grizabella, Betty Buckley, who was at the premiere, was shielding her ears.

With “Memory” massacred, that leaves space for the delicate new song, “Beautiful Ghosts” — co-written by Lloyd Webber with Swift and performed by her over the end credits — to shine. It’s first heard in a lovely interpretation by Hayward, who extends a welcoming hand to the ostracized Grizabella, leading to Old Deuteronomy’s inevitable choice. Even for folks who have never seen Cats , that outcome is so preordained that the dramatic stakes are close to zero.

The entire cast is working hard here, and class acts like Dench and McKellen can preserve their dignity just about anywhere. The actors who lean into the comedy, notably Corden and Wilson, tend to be the most insufferable. Kinder, gentler impressions are made by the dancers, who also seem the most comfortable at simulating cat movements; along with Hayward and McRae, they include former New York City Ballet principal Robbie Fairchild as Old Deut’s deputy, Munkustrap.

Oscars: 'Lion King,' 'Rise of Skywalker' and 'Cats' Among 20 Films to Advance in VFX Race

Derulo makes the most of his sexy, athletic appearance; Swift sparkles in her one-song role, descending from a smashed skylight on a theatrical crescent moon, sprinkling catnip; and Laurie Davidson as “The Magical Mr. Mistoffelees” gets the kind of bells-and-whistles showstopper that should make young kids perk up.

I found it all exhausting. Eve Stewart’s production design lathers a fairy-tale gloss over familiar London settings like the Thames, with the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben in the background, along with Soho and Piccadilly Circus, where the Jellicle Ball takes place in the abandoned Egyptian Theatre, its façade adorned with feline sculptural features. And there are loads of cat references in the neon signage, from milk bars to West End plays like The Cat and the Canary  and, of course, The Mousetrap . But all the purples and pinks and midnight blues become monotonous. While the desired effect seems to be one of enchanting artifice, like the original Mary Poppins , the visuals have a harsh quality that points up the heavy reliance on CGI components throughout.

Hooper can seldom be accused of having a light touch — even less so here than in his punishingly emphatic Les Misérables . But at least in the Trafalgar Square-set finale, which makes use of the big cats that flank Nelson’s Column, he gives Dench a platform to do what she does best. She might be wondering, “How long before I escape this giant furball?,” but as she wraps her silvery voice and masterful command of language around a playful recital of “The Ad-dressing of Cats,” she rescues a trace of authentic T.S. Eliot whimsy from the gaudy wreckage.

Production companies: Working Title, Amblin Entertainment, in association with Monumental Pictures, The Really Useful Group Distributor: Universal Cast: James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, Francesca Hayward, Robbie Fairchild, Laurie Davidson, Ray Winstone, Larry Bourgeois, Laurent Bourgeois, Mette Towley, Steven McRae, Zizi Strallen, Danny Collins, Bluey Robinson, Naoimh Morgan, Daniela Norman, Jaih Betote, Ida Saki, Eric Underwood, Jonadette Carpio, Freya Rowley, Cory English, Melissa Madden-Gray Director: Tom Hooper Screenwriters: Lee Hall, Tom Hooper, based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and the poems of  Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , by T.S. Eliot Producers: Debra Hayward, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Tom Hooper Executive producers: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Angela Morrison, Liza Chasen, Jo Burn Director of photography: Christopher Ross Production designer: Eve Stewart Costume designer: Paco Delgado Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Greg Wells, Marius De Vries Editor: Melanie Ann Oliver Choreographer: Andy Blankenbuehler Cat movement choreographer: Sarah Dowling Visual effects supervisors: Steve Preeg, Phil Brennan, Jason Billington, Matt Jacobs Visual effects producer: Rupert Smith Casting: Lucy Bevan

Rated PG, 110 minutes

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Paramount’s chris aronson to receive career achievement award from children’s charity, milli vanilli’s fab morvan reflects on one of pop’s biggest scandals: “we were just a pawn in the machine”, joey king fights against a dystopian society’s pretty standards in trailer for netflix’s ‘uglies’, cate blanchett says she “didn’t get paid anything” for ‘lord of the rings’, ‘it ends with us’ costume designer on blake lively’s outfits criticism: “it’s great to be talked about”, edgar pêra on opening “cyber-pandora’s box” for ai movie ‘telepathic letters’ about lovecraft, pessoa.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A tribe of cats called the Jellicles must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life. A tribe of cats called the Jellicles must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life. A tribe of cats called the Jellicles must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life.

• Andrew Lloyd Webber
• James Corden
• Jason Derulo
• 2.2K User reviews
• 261 Critic reviews
• 32 Metascore
• 11 wins & 8 nominations

Top cast 80

• Bustopher Jones

• Old Deuteronomy

• Rum Tum Tugger

• (as Mette Towley)

• Mr. Mistoffelees

• Rumpleteazer

• Mungojerrie

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

The Cast of 'Cats' Play Our 'Cats Out of the Bag' Game

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia On 21 December 2019, a mere two days after its release, Universal Pictures announced they would be releasing a new version with updated CGI at an undisclosed time.
• Goofs A few calico cats, including Mungojerrie, are male. Although the nature of chromosomes causes most calico cats to be female, it is a little known fact that male calico cats can exist, although they are extremely rare.

Victoria : But the memories were lost long ago. So I'll dance with these beautiful ghosts.

• Crazy credits The film opens without any opening credits. The title of the film is stated just before the closing credits.
• Alternate versions An "completely finished" version, which improves the VFX, replaces the "Early Preview" version with the use of the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) that with downloaded onto a satellite server after the opening weekend, as demanded by Universal Studios International (UIP). Hard drives copies will be released at indie cinemas on Christmas Eve.
• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: Uh... Meow? (2019)
• Soundtracks Overture Written by Andrew Lloyd Webber

User reviews 2.2K

• Feb 1, 2020
• How long is Cats? Powered by Alexa
• Is this film using live action, motion capture or animated?
• Is the cast singing live like it was in Les Miserables (2012)?
• What is a "jellicle"?
• December 20, 2019 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official Instagram
• Những Chú Mèo
• Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, Warner Drive, Leavesden, Watford, Hertfordshire, England, UK (Studio)
• Working Title Films
• Amblin Entertainment
• Perfect World Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $95,000,000 (estimated)
• $27,166,770
• Dec 22, 2019
• $75,558,925

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 50 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos
• 12-Track Digital Sound
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• D-Cinema 96kHz 7.1

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• IMDb Answers: Help fill gaps in our data
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

‘Cats’: Film Review

Nine may not be enough lives for some of the stars to live down their involvement in this poorly conceived and executed adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

• ‘Borderlands’ Review: After ‘Tár,’ It’s Strange to See Cate Blanchett Slumming in a Middling Video Game Movie 18 hours ago
• I Survived a Marathon of Zack Snyder’s Unrated ‘Rebel Moon’ — But Still Can’t Tell You Why It Exists 3 days ago
• ‘Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie’ Review: SpongeBob’s Latest Is a Chipmunk off the Old Blockhead 6 days ago

Back in the summer of 2015, the co-directors of Disney’s “Zootopia” went rogue, disregarding the advice of their corporate colleagues and appearing onstage at the Annecy animation festival disguised as the talking-animal cartoon’s fur-covered lead characters, an anthropomorphic rabbit and her foxy best friend. The audience ate it up, but behind the scenes, the Disney suits were sweating. For decades, the family entertainment company had been dealing with a very specific group of enthusiasts, identified as “furries,” who get off on dressing up in full-body animal costumes, drawing inspiration wherever they can find it. By now, Disney lawyers know how to deal with that crowd, but other studios have to learn the hard way.

I mention this because it’s just one of dozens of things the folks at Universal seem not to have taken into consideration before making a movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s long-running musical “ Cats ” — another being the need to define, for generations uninitiated, the meaning of “Jellicle,” a nonsense word repeated nearly six dozen times in the opening number alone. Fans of the original show may embrace it; so too will furries, I’d wager. But it’s not enough to take a blockbuster Broadway phenomenon with one iconic earworm — Lloyd Webber’s unforgettable “Memory” — and a loose plot about a community of street cats competing for a chance to be reborn, and trust it to work on the big screen.

Related Stories

Some olympics tv is in 4k, but viewers care little for the format: survey, youtube q2 ad revenue hits $8.66 billion, up 13%, short of wall street expectations.

“The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper ’s outlandishly tacky interpretation seems destined to become one of those once-in-a-blue-moon embarrassments that mars the résumés of great actors (poor Idris Elba, already scarred enough as the villainous Macavity) and trips up the careers of promising newcomers (like ballerina Francesca Hayward, whose wide-eyed, mouth-agape Victoria displays one expression for the entire movie). From the first shot — of just such a blue moon, distressingly fake, flanked by poufy cat-shaped clouds — to the last, “Cats” hurts the eyes and, yes, the ears, as nearly all the musical numbers, including “Memory,” have been twisted into campy, awards-grubbing cameos for big-name stars in bad-CG cat drag.

From the moment a teaser trailer hit the web last summer, the studio has been reeling from the ridicule, seemingly blindsided by harsh attacks on the character designs, the visual effects and the very notion of adapting the hit show. Truth be told, it should have anticipated the backlash. None of it would have mattered if the movie were halfway decent. Sadly, this uneven eyesore turns out to be every bit the Jellicle catastrophe the haters anticipated, a half-digested hairball of a movie in which Hooper spends too much energy worrying about whether the technology is ready to accommodate his vision and not enough focusing on what millions love about the musical in the first place.

Simply put, face paint and Lycra have done the trick for decades. Skeptical cats and dyspeptical cats don’t need Jellicle cats to be photorealistical cats, for if they were, it would open up a whole new realm of headaches to pedantical cats and critical cats — questions no one wants to consider about why they walk upright and talk in rhyme, and how to explain away their bosoms and bulges. The answer to the former gets to a fundamental philosophical difference between the stage and screen treatments of the material: “Cats” the musical was adapted from a volume of T.S. Eliot’s poetry titled “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” which coined the term “Jellicle” and contributed much of the verse that served as lyrics. While Lloyd Webber supplied the music, Gillian Lynne’s choreography was every bit as important to the show’s success.

“Nipples to the sky!” went one of Lynne’s signature directives — the title of an upcoming documentary about the creative collaborator, whose sexually charged approach seems largely ignored in this clumsy new version of “Cats.” Whereas the musical celebrated dancing bodies, the movie emphasizes singing faces. Expanding his role from the recent revival, “Hamilton” choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler’s updated (some might say “neutered”) maneuvers suffer from graceless editing and a split-second lag in the performance-capture process — plus frightening angles whenever the alarming creatures leap across screen. Emotion takes precedence over motion, which doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, except now, the numbers have been stripped of their sing-along potential, presented not as whimsical ditties but as altogether-too-earnest renditions.

The company was never meant to be read literally as cats: It’s made up of lithe and flexible acrobats who’ve adapted their cat-like gestures to suggest feline behavior, even going so far as to stalk the aisles and interact with audience members. For the movie, they’ve been cast with pop stars and Oscar laureates — from Taylor Swift (Satine-like Bombalurina) and Jason Derulo (glam-rock tomcat Rum Tum Tugger) to Jennifer Hudson (ostracized outsider Grizabella) and Judi Dench (respected Old Deuteronomy, a role presented here as female for the first time).

The instant a filmmaker comes along, blocking and framing all that dancing into medium and tight shots, the effect is lost. We find it impossible to fully appreciate the choreography, while our brains instinctively switch over to nitpicking mode: What’s with the ears, amputated on the sides, cute but not convincingly cat-like on top? Should the whiskers really originate directly under the singers’ noses? Why do the characters’ heads seem to change shape entirely every time the actors shift position? And under such conditions, just how much of the human form are we comfortable recognizing under all that virtual fur?

Since its London debut in 1981, “Cats” has always been a divisive production. It was an easy punchline for haters while delighting the hoi polloi by the herd. If you sense condescension in this review, it’s not intentional: “Cats” was the first major musical I ever saw, and I wore the T-shirt proudly, with its signature cat eyes — a logo that subliminally emphasized the show’s priorities via the silhouetted dancers half-disguised in the feline pupils. To a kid raised in Texas, having experienced “Cats” at the theatah passed for sophistication. To more cultured New Yorkers, it was beneath contempt.

When the show opened on Broadway, David Letterman picked on it constantly. A few years later, playwright John Guare used it as a running joke in “Six Degrees of Separation,” wherein a family of upper-crust Gothamites are taken in by a charming young con man who claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier, seducing them all with the promise of roles in the movie version of “Cats.” “Don’t be snooty,” chides the husband, while his wife wonders, “Is it right to make a movie of ‘Cats’?”

Steven Spielberg tried, but couldn’t crack it (he still takes his credit as an executive producer), and the task fell to Hooper, who’d reimagined another of stage director Trevor Nunn’s mega-shows, “Les Misérables,” for the screen. Just as that adaptation went its own way, bringing a sense of grit and grime (and shaky, documentary-style camerawork) to Victor Hugo’s ragged portrait of France’s dispossessed, this one also breaks from what had been done onstage. Hooper broadens beyond the back-alley setting to reveal a stylized version of London’s Trafalgar Square, all but devoid of homo sapiens yet newly festooned with cat-related details (extending far beyond its familiar bronze lions).

This allows him to visit cats in different habitats, from the vermin-infested kitchen where Old Gumbie Cat (Rebel Wilson) surveys mice and cockroaches dancing in Busby Berkeley-style formation (the pests appear far too tiny relative to the cats’ scale, not that there’s any consistency on that front) to the stage where Gus the Theatre Cat (Ian McKellen) sings of his exploits, and from which Old Deuteronomy will select a cat for reincarnation at the annual Jellicle ball. Hooper frames things through Victoria’s slow-blinking gaze, as the new arrival — tossed out in a pillow case by the film’s lone human character — adjusts to her new feline family. It is Victoria who sings the movie’s new song, the “Memory”-complementing “Beautiful Ghosts,” although its addition diminishes — as opposed to emphasizing — Grizabella’s neglected status, sounding better in Swift’s rendition over the end credits.

In a weak attempt to create more of a story (it’s a misconception that “Cats” has none, when in fact it does, just not a particularly compelling one), Hooper and co-writer Lee Hall have made Macavity a more nefarious character, lurking on the sidelines of each of the previous cats’ songs. When they’re finished, he works some kind of magic — enticing the ever-hungry Bustopher Jones (James Corden) with a pile of mouthwatering trash — that causes them to vanish in a puff of dander. They reappear across town, held captive on a barge in the River Thames by battered old Growltiger (Ray Winstone), who serves as Macavity’s surly accomplice.

This device gives new purpose to the musical’s second-best song, the spectacular “Mr. Mistoffelees,” sung not by the magically inclined tuxedo cat (Laurie Davidson, the rare cast member likely to benefit from his involvement in “Cats”) but by all those who believe in his ability to make Old Deuteronomy reappear. Narratively, it’s a nice touch, but again — as when Hudson delivers her overly emotive rendition of “Memory” — the song suffers from being treated far too literally in this context. There will be plenty, I’m sure, who take no issue with Hooper’s garish aesthetics, although it’s hard to defend the big-screen musical’s treatment of Lloyd Webber’s music, or the sloppy substitute for Lynne’s choreography. At the end of the day, one wonders whether Hooper has even spent much time around cats.

Reviewed at TCL Chinese 6 Theater, Los Angeles, Dec. 17, 2019. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 110 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.-U.S.) A Universal Pictures release and presentation of a Working Title Films, Amblin Entertainment production, in association with Monumental Pictures, the Really Useful Group. Producers: Debra Hayward, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Tom Hooper. Executive producers: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Steven Spielberg, Angela Morrison, Jo Burn.
• Crew: Director: Tom Hooper. Screenplay: Lee Hall, Tom Hooper, based on the stage musical "Cats" by Andrew Lloyd Webber and "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats” by T.S. Eliot. Camera (color, widescreen): Christopher Ross. Editors: Melanie Oliver. Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber. Choreography: Andy Blankenbuehler.
• With: Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson , James Corden, Jason Derulo, Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, Francesca Hayward.

More from Variety

‘house of the dragon’ finale hits season 2 viewership high with nearly 9 million viewers, but down from season 1 ender, fine-tuning ai video models getting early interest from film & tv studios, spider-man noir series at amazon, mgm+ casts abraham popoola, amazon’s prime video interface update promises to make it easier to tell what’s included with your subscription — and what costs extra, training ai with tv & film content: how licensing deals look, the best amazon prime day deals on home entertainment: record players, projectors, smart tvs and more, more from our brands, dead and co. wrap up their sphere residency this weekend — here’s where to buy last-minute tickets, billionaire larry ellison just bought the famous eau palm beach resort in florida, scrubs maker figs bets on team usa as q2 costs rise, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, tvline items: gary coleman docu trailer, judy greer joins owen wilson series and more.

Advertisement

Supported by

Critics’ Claws Are Out for ‘Cats’: A Roundup of Reviews

The trailer sent shock waves through the internet this summer. Now that they’ve seen it, what do critics have to say about the new big-screen adaptation?

• Share full article

By Emily S. Rueb

When the first “Cats” trailer dropped in July, the internet convulsed with revulsion and awe. People were unprepared for the digital fur technology that was unleashed in the two-minute spectacle .

“If this messed up world doesn’t kill us first, ‘Cats’ will clearly finish the job when it opens on Dec. 20,” Garrett Martin of Paste Magazine wrote .

And with the release of the film this week, a similar tide of panic, confusion and anger has flooded the American psyche — or at least the psyches of those who have been exposed to the feature-length film that some fear they cannot unsee.

As of Thursday night, the movie had a 34 on the film review site Metacritic , a score based on the generally unfavorable reviews of 43 critics. It registered at 20 percent on Rotten Tomatoes , which offered this bit of punditry: “Despite its fur-midable cast, this ‘Cats’ adaptation is a clawful mistake that will leave most viewers begging to be put out of their mew-sery.”

Critics have complained that the stress of viewing the movie has triggered migraines and the urge to throw shoes at the screen . And yet, others have found they can’t look away.

Alex Cranz of Gizmodo said she saw sights no human should see: “I have been processing this movie for the last 24 hours trying to understand anything as terrifying and visceral a train wreck as ‘Cats.’ You have to see ‘Cats.’”

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Cats review – will haunt viewers for generations

No amount of A-list stars can save Tom Hooper’s dire Lloyd Webber adaptation from being a career low for all involved

W hen asked at the world premiere of Cats on Monday if he was happy with how the film looked, director Tom Hooper replied wearily that he had finished it “at 8am the previous day”. Yet one wonders if more time spent perfecting the state-of-the-art digital fur technology in his baffling adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash-hit stage musical would have helped.

The original musical, based on TS Eliot’s 1939 poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , is widely acknowledged as a plotless spectacle. That Hooper, who made 2012’s Oscar-winning Les Misérables , felt the story would lend itself to a feature film was optimistic at best. In a neon-lit junkyard somewhere in London’s West End, abandoned white kitten Victoria (the Royal Ballet’s Francesca Hayward) finds herself among a community of “jellicle cats” competing for the chance to ascend to the heaviside layer, aka cat heaven, where they will be reborn. Each cat must prove themselves by singing a song: one lucky winner is chosen by Judi Dench’s gender-flipped Old Deuteronomy (who has fur, but also, illogically, wears a fur coat). Much like season three of American Idol , there are tears, VIP guests and a thankless performance from the otherwise talented Jennifer Hudson.

With no narrative scaffolding in place, the film relies on Lloyd Webber and Trevor Nunn’s songs. Styled in a Prince-style purple coat, pop star Jason Derulo brings some sexual energy to Rum Tum Tugger (those familiar with Derulo’s signature song intro will be disappointed to discover that he does not begin by announcing his own name). Taylor Swift’s bratty, libidinous Bombalurina is better – stomping around in high heels, shimmying her furry breasts and purring “Macavity the mystery cat” with a faux-British accent. Swift is the only cast member who seems to be having fun, perhaps because she only appears in the film for approximately 10 minutes.

For most of the others involved, it’s a clear career low. Rebel Wilson’s number involves a conga line of dancing cockroaches, while James Corden’s overweight tabby, Bustopher Jones, rolls around in an actual pile of litter. One wonders if the actors are aware of what they’ve gotten themselves into. There’s something undignified about watching Ian McKellen (who plays Gus the Theatre Cat) meowing and lapping a bowl of milk in his bare feet; Jennifer Hudson’s Grizabella is ugly-crying in every one of her scenes; and when Rum Tum Tugger grimaces direct to camera, it feels like Derulo is breaking the fourth wall.

The camera’s canted angles and shaky closeups convulse with feeling that the actors can’t seem to summon. Ensemble dance sequences convey neither emotion nor information (except that the felines each have 10 fully articulated human toes). The film is rated U, but many of its uncanny images are sure to haunt viewers for generations.

Everything feels off, from the scale of the purpose-built set (which makes the cats look more like Borrowers) to the erratic interpretations of its musical numbers. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, in which mischievous cats trash a human house, is joyless and devoid of anarchy. Hudson’s 11th-hour ballad, Memory, feels like a desperate, last-ditch grasp towards something resembling pathos.

Regarding cats or humans, Hooper, it seems, has nothing to say. This is middlebrow film-making at its most hubristic; too inelegant to coast on spectacle alone, it’s not subversive enough to be considered truly camp either. I expect the film’s grab-bag celebrity cast and Christmas release date will secure its box-office success. The stage is on fire, but the show must go on.

• The Observer
• Taylor Swift
• Ian McKellen
• James Corden
• Jennifer Hudson

More on this story

Scratch that: Cats film to be 'resupplied' with 'improved visuals'

Have you seen Cats? Tell us what you think

Cats’ dirty little secret: it’s a horny feline romp

Rhyming review of Cats sparks Memory

TS Eliot would not have minded Cats reviews, says his estate

'A furry orgy in a dumpster': what the reviews say about Cats

Cats review – a purr-fectly dreadful hairball of woe

Cats: can the CGI nightmare movie actually land on its feet?

Comments (…), most viewed.

‘Cats’ Film Review: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Feline Fantasy Musical Becomes a Garish Hairball

It’s hard to “ruin” Webber’s already strange musical, but Tom Hooper’s wrongheaded attempt certainly tries

The film of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” arrives without so much buzz as hisses thanks to a trailer released back in July which seemed to horrify more than to suggest a beloved fantasy musical that has, according to provided production information, been staged for over 81 million people in more than 50 countries and in 19 languages since its London premiere in 1981.

In its original theatrical presentation, “Cats” was weird, yes, but also an admirably immersive, intimate blend of junkyard pizzazz, busy makeup, leg warmers, T.S. Eliot rhymes and Webber earworms that, in its nonsensical Jellicle-osity, added up to something reasonably transportive. It never purred, but it pranced, preened and projected enough to be cat-video distracting, even as it augured decades of stage musicals that favored the flashy over the finely tuned.

But Tom Hooper’s jarring fever dream of a spectacle is like something that escaped from Dr. Moreau’s creature laboratory instead of a poet’s and a composer’s feline (uni)verse, an un-catty valley hybrid of physical and digital that unsettles and crashes way more often than it enchants.

And it does enchant a few times, thanks to the ease with which Jennifer Hudson (as downtrodden Grizabella), Judi Dench (as regal Old Deuteronomy) and Ian McKellen (as, who else, the Theater Cat) growl some feeling into the heaving, disorienting strangeness. Like how Anne Hathaway was that oasis of soulfulness in Hooper’s deranged visual-aural hash of “Les Misérables.”

His “Cats” isn’t the same kind of bad, though, even as Hooper remains a terrible director of movies dependent on the effortless combining of song, performance, and movement. For all I know, he may even secretly hate musicals. But this “Cats,” rather than being some mistreated classic, is mostly a bizarro version of an already risky show that — unlike the Jellicle eventually chosen for ascendant rebirth in its threadbare narrative — never achieves lift-off.

Cats are elegant. This “Cats” isn’t. In fact, for a good while — starting with the opening, which introduces pearl-colored new stray Victoria (ballet superstar Francesca Hayward) to the turf felines who prowl 1930s’ London hoping to be anointed by Old Deuteronomy, and through numbers with Rebel Wilson (as showbiz-mad Jennyanydots), Jason Derulo (as self-centered Rum Tum Tugger) and James Corden (as gluttonous Bustopher) — it’s painful enough to make your heart race for everyone involved.

It’s one thing trying to get acclimated to the digi-furred humans, cartoonishly upscaled environments and choppily edited disrespect for Andy Blankenbuehler’s hormonal choreography. It’s another to feel abiding pity for committed performers, especially Wilson, tasked with cat puns and awkward body displays that Hooper films with something close to perverse contempt.

Hayward’s Victoria has been given the protagonist’s role — the stranger learning a new world — in Hooper’s and co-screenwriter Lee Hall’s reworking of a story-deficient show into something meagerly plotted. Never mind, one thinks: We’re here for razzle-dazzle.

And yet it’s abidingly odd that Hayward and the other dance-trained performers in key roles (like Tony-nominated Robert Fairchild and Royal Ballet Principal Steven McRae) never look entirely like real people doing real dances on real sets, so pervasive in saturated color and off-kilter depth and movement is the mood of CG artificiality rendered by DP Christopher Ross (“Yesterday”) and the effects team.

When even a simple shot of a vase teetering, falling and smashing looks animated (and badly so), one questions the authenticity of every catlike leap and bound, too, which starts to become a form of moviegoer madness as Hooper’s pathological visual restlessness keeps any sense of otherworldly wonder at bay.

When things slow down, though, for Hudson’s appealingly torchy “Memory,” Dench’s queenly countenance (in a role typically played onstage by a man) and shabby tabby McKellen making you believe he — and not (ahem) a mouse — is controlling his ears, Hooper briefly quashes his worst instincts, too.

It’s practically a pivot point, from full-on disaster to merely wrongheaded oddity. The Jellicle Ball sequence, which makes the best use of Eve Stewart’s distressed production design, at least feels grounded in a kind of school-play energy. And Taylor Swift’s strutting, gamely British-accented number about the show’s villain, Idris Elba’s Macavity, recalls the loony music-hall verve with which Ken Russell approached musicals. (Swift’s and Webber’s co-written new song “Beautiful Ghosts,” however, paired with “Memory” as an I-see-you response to Grizabella, is paradoxically unmemorable.)

As for Elba, snarly and green-eyed, the sinister play-acting is fine until he has to step lively at the end without his trenchcoat and is felled by that unflattering, photorealistic, skintight cat fur, like a Snapchat filter gone horribly wrong. It’s peculiar to think Elba looks better with his clothes on, but that’s where “Cats” has left us, folks — wishing for the simple pleasures of dressing-room greasepaint skills, fuzzy handmade costumes, and even those leg warmers while wanting to erase the sight of breast bumps and erect tails.

Eager cultists and the psychotropic-minded may lovingly feast on this “Cats” for years to come, and even children may feel they’ve learned a valuable lesson about the limits of the imagination. But for now (and to borrow its famed tagline, forever), this version is just a big swing and a hiss.

These Brutal Cats Reviews Are Better Than the Actual Movie

There is no shortage of feline puns.

Every product on this page was chosen by a Harper's BAZAAR editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

There are good reviews, there are bad reviews, and then there are the Cats reviews.

The reviews for Cats —which, in an unsettling coincidence, broke the same time as the impeachment vote—are absolutely brutal, ranging from unsatisfied to downright disturbed. What I could have only best described as "freaky" and "a hot fever dream," film critics have characterized as "a monstrosity," "a descent into madness," and "nearly as obscene as The Human Centipede ."

Now, it's easy to assume the writers are overreacting. Maybe they're taking the film too seriously, or maybe they don't understand that Andrew Lloyd Weber's original theatrical masterpiece—which itself is an adaptation of T.S. Eliot's 1939 collection of feline poems —transcends practical narrative structure. But, as someone who watched the musical on VHS growing up, sung along with the Broadway cast recording, and crawled around an auditorium in furry spandex for my own high school's production of the musical, I can assure you, they're not.

My school's rendition of Cats in 2010 was interrupted by a minor fire onstage due to a pyrotechnic accident during the Mr. Mistoffelees number, which caused some audience members to evacuate mid-production (no one was hurt; the show went on like nothing happened). And yet somehow I was more terrified—and, I'll admit, sometimes giddy—watching Tom Hooper's digitally-enhanced film adaptation during a press screening this week.

Does this mean you shouldn't watch Cats at all? No. You should absolutely watch Cats . If you're a diehard fan of the show, you'll ogle at the choreography and sing "The Rum Tum Tugger" in your seat. Although the digitized film cannot compare to the bewilderingly entertaining live performance, it is definitely the kind of movie you just need to experience yourself.

But if you're only here for the bad reviews, read the roughest (and funniest) ones below—if you can stomach all of the hairball and litter box puns.

We Watched Cats on Opening Night and Lost All Nine Lives — The staff of Jezebel .

Cats : A Broadway Musical Adaptation Straight Outta the Litter Box — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone . Plus this dek: "This disastrous attempt to bring Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical to the screen shouldn’t happen to a dog."

Cats Is Good. Cats Is Bad. Cats Is Cats . — Alison Willmore, Vulture . In the review itself, she adds, "To assess Cats as good or bad feels like the entirely wrong axis on which to see it. It is, with all affection, a monstrosity."

Cats review: a sinister, all-time disaster from which no one emerges unscathed — Tim Robey (who gave the film zero stars), The Telegraph .

Cats review – a purr-fectly dreadful hairball of woe — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian .

Watching Cats Is Like a Descent into Madness — Matt Goldberg, Collider .

Cats Review: I Have Seen Sights No Human Should See — Alex Crans, io9 .

Cats Is A Nightmare That Won't End — Jill Gutowitz, ELLE.com .

The Cats Movie Is a Boring Disaster Filled With Joyless Pussies — Kevin Fallon, Daily Beast .

The movie Cats doesn’t even know what the musical Cats is about — Aja Romano, Vox .

Cats review: Movie musical is a total disaster — Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post . His lede, however, is the real kicker: "Please wipe this movie from my 'Memory.'"

Cats Review: A Tragical Mess of Mistoffelees — Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair .

Cats review: You won't leave the theater purring — Rafer Guzmán, Newsday .

Cats Film Review: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Feline Fantasy Musical Becomes a Garish Hairball — Robert Abele, The Wrap .

Cats Is Impossible to Review — Adam Nayman, The Ringer .

Cats Review: Going to the Dogs — John Anderson, The Wall Street Journal .

Cats leaves behind a memory that's best forgotten — Brian Lowry, CNN .

Cats review — musical mess is one for the litter tray — Kevin Maher, The Times .

Oh God, my eyes — Ty Burr, The Boston Globe .

Cats review: Nearly as obscene as The Human Centipede — David Sexton, The Evening Standard .

Cats : Spay It — Scott Tobias NPR .

Other pieces with tamer titles contained gems in the text, like this nugget from Manohla Dargis of The New York Times : "[Hooper’s] mistake is that he’s tried to class up the joint. What a blunder!"

And there's brutal blow from Peter Debruge of Variety :

"Sadly, this uneven eyesore turns out to be every bit the Jellicle catastrophe the haters anticipated, a half-digested hairball of a movie in which Hooper spends too much energy worrying about whether the technology is ready to accommodate his vision and not enough focusing on what millions love about the musical in the first place."

And this from Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly :

"Even after 110 tumbling, tail-swishing, deeply psychedelic minutes, it’s hard to know if you ever really knew anything — except that C is for Cats , C is for Crazy, and C is probably the grade this cinematic lunacy deserves, in the sense of making any sense at all."

The one from Justin Chang of The Los Angeles Times too:

"There is a strange scene — OK, there are many strange scenes — near the end of 'Cats,' the flailing feline phantasmagoria coming soon to a movie theater and/or shroom party near you."

Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she's listening to Lorde right now. 

Film, TV & Theatre

Will 'The Diplomat' Get a Second Season?

See Paris & Nicole Back on the “Simple Life” Set

An Exclusive Look at the Costumes of “The Crow”

Best Twitter Reactions to “House of the Dragon”

The 18 Best Korean Movies Streaming in 2024

“House of the Dragon” Season 3: Everything We Know

Who Has What It Takes to Be Britney Spears?

See a First Look at 'The White Lotus' S3

House of the Dragon Finale, Explained

An Official Britney Spears Biopic Is On the Way

Havana Rose Liu Loves a Tweed Suit You Can Move In

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Fitness & Wellbeing
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Car Insurance Deals
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Climate 100
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

Cats review: Improbable and entirely indescribable

Tom hooper’s adaptation of the stage musical is one of those rare cinematic events that feels like a collective hallucination, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey

Get our the life cinematic email for free, thanks for signing up to the the life cinematic email.

Dir: Tom Hooper. Cast: Francesca Hayward, James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson. U cert, 110 mins

Cats is destined to go down in glorious infamy. It’s one of those rare cinematic events that feels like a collective hallucination – improbable and entirely indescribable. What can you say when faced with Sir Ian McKellen , CGI-ed into a cat-person body, gingerly licking milk out of a bowl? How do you react to Idris Elba throwing off his coat to reveal a set of rippling cat abs? What do you do when Taylor Swift starts shaking her cat boobs, while sprinkling catnip into an enraptured crowd? The big-screen adaptation of the musical Cats cannot be tamed. You strap in, you experience it, and then you live with the memories.

It’s arguably a little unfair to put this down to a failure in filmmaking. Andrew Lloyd Webber ’s original stage musical, which debuted in 1981, is as weird as they come. Adapted from TS Eliot’s poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , it has a non-existent plot in which a series of cats – with names like Rum Tum Tugger and Mr Mistoffelees – introduce themselves, before one of their number is chosen to ascend to something called the Heaviside Layer. It’s unclear whether this means heaven, outer space or total annihilation.

On stage, the actors wear skin-tight leotards and painted-on stripes, noses and whiskers. It looks odd and dorky, like when someone turns up to a Halloween party having put in way more effort than everyone else. But Hollywood’s insatiable appetite for technological advancement means that Cats goes one step further, employing “digital fur technology” to create mutant feline-human hybrids. And while the effect of “uncanny valley” in films using heavy CGI usually wears off after a good half hour or so (take The Irishman ’s digital de-aging), the cats in Cats are uncomfortable to look at from start to finish.

It’s not helped by the fact that some of them are given clothes, making you only more aware of the fact that these cat-people are naked and smooth like Barbie and Ken dolls. Skimbleshanks wears trousers, shoes and braces – but no shirt. Rebel Wilson’s Jennyanydots reveals a zipper on her chest, pulls it down, and then proceeds to shed an entire layer of her skin, revealing more cat fur and a tap dance outfit underneath.

The 20 greatest movie musicals

Director Tom Hooper seems to have fully condoned and, possibly, even actively desired the chaos of Cats . Every one of his directorial choices – such as using the same Steadicam and vertiginous angles of his 2012 adaptation of Les Misérables – seems tailor-made for maximum disorientation.

There are breakdancing felines that, when rendered in CGI, seem to lose the stiffness in their joints and turn into undulating tubes of cat meat. The few scenes of spoken dialogue are frequently interrupted by the tiny pitter-patter of cat-people feet shuffling in the background. There are cats shoved in every corner of each frame, crawling and writhing around.

It certainly stays faithful to the original show’s off-putting sexual energy, as infamously exemplified by Rum Tum Tugger, here played by Jason Derulo. That said, the musician finds charm in the role and walks away as one of the film’s few genuine highlights. McKellen and Judi Dench, both playing stately elder cats, also manage to work the balance between feline habits and human pathos with the ease of seasoned professionals. Swift, however, doesn’t even attempt a cat impression. She’s her same-old self parachuted in to offer her usual shtick.

In fact, Cats loses some of its delirious sparkle whenever we’re reminded of who’s pulling the strings behind the scenes. Both Wilson and James Corden are carted in to deliver a few of their standard punchlines, but their asides feel too ironic and out of place for this world (at one point, Wilson asks whether Rum Tum Tugger’s been neutered, since he can hit so many high notes).

Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days

New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled

The new addition to the soundtrack, “Beautiful Ghosts”, written by Swift and Lloyd Webber, is instantly forgettable. Most frustratingly, it manages to yank the spotlight away from the genuine centrepiece of Cats : “Memory”, sung here by Jennifer Hudson. In another world, Hudson – like Anne Hathaway as Fantine before her – might have won an Oscar for her raw, snot-drenched performance, as the camera hovers as close to her face as possible. It would be beautiful, if only the whiskers sprouting out of her face weren’t so distracting.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

How to Prepare Your Kids for School After a Summer of Screen Time

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

Common sense media reviewers.

Big-screen musical adaptation is both strange and magical.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Messages include letting go of the pain of the pas

A wise cat who has lived "many lives" is unwilling

A sneaky, creepy, conniving cat tries to use magic

Rude and suggestive behavior. No explicit sexualit

Some suggestive language, but no swearing.

A wealthy cat boasts/brags a bit about his provisi

Cats have catnip.

Parents need to know that Cats is based on Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running musical of the same name (which, in turn, was based on T.S. Eliot's poetry). The story takes place all in one night as a tribe of cats called the Jellicles gather together for a ball and celebration. While there's no overt violence,…

Positive Messages

Messages include letting go of the pain of the past, recognizing value of new beginnings, embracing the reality that you belong after a life of abandonment and rejection. Themes include compassion, empathy, courage.

Positive Role Models

A wise cat who has lived "many lives" is unwilling to compromise, won't grant a new life to a cat with a dark heart; it has to be a cat with a good soul who genuinely needs a new beginning. A kitten doesn't judge an old, rejected cat who's past their glory; rather, she shows compassion, encourages this dejected cat to find courage to believe in herself and possibility of better life. A kitten is empathetic to others' needs, despite her own issues with abandonment. A shy magician finds courage to believe in his own magic. An older, disgraced cat acknowledges her pain but presses past it anyway -- and, as a result, gains an incredible opportunity.

Violence & Scariness

A sneaky, creepy, conniving cat tries to use magic and sorcery to win a chance at a new life. He ties up other cats and threatens to throw Old Deuteronomy into deep waters. A mean, dangerous cat is thrown into the water.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Rude and suggestive behavior. No explicit sexuality, but human actors' bodies are made to appear sensuously feline-like -- especially the female ones, which often seem to be positioned very sexually and moving in a sexual manner. While there are no crude acts of any kind, there's a bit of sexual innuendo.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

A wealthy cat boasts/brags a bit about his provisions. Cats is an established brand.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Cats is based on Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running musical of the same name (which, in turn, was based on T.S. Eliot's poetry). The story takes place all in one night as a tribe of cats called the Jellicles gather together for a ball and celebration. While there's no overt violence, sexual content, or strong language, a conniving cat does tie up other cats and threatens them, characters speak suggestively at times, and the "digital fur" technology used for the film results in the actors' human bodies appearing sensuously feline-like -- especially those of the female cats/characters. Plus, some of the cats wear clothes while others don't, so some are technically naked. But themes include compassion, empathy, and courage, and the all-star cast -- including Taylor Swift , James Corden , Rebel Wilson , Jason Derulo , Francesca Hayward , Idris Elba , and Judi Dench -- are committed to their performances. Tween and teen musical theater fans will likely be quite entertained. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (65)
• Kids say (98)

Based on 65 parent reviews

Why is everyone Hating?

Actually really nice movie don't let the promotion fool you, what's the story.

Director Tom Hooper 's adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running musical CATS (which, in turn, was based on T.S. Eliot's 1939 poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats ) stays true to the original production, which first debuted on May 11, 1981. The story follows a tribe of cats called the Jellicles over the course of one night as they prepare to present themselves to Old Deuteronomy ( Judi Dench ) in hopes of being chosen as the one cat who will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. Abandoned as a small kitten but full of love and empathy, Victoria ( Francesca Hayward ) longs to belong. Rejected and full of pain over a life passed, Grizabella ( Jennifer Hudson ) must muster the courage to embrace new beginnings. And an entire tribe of cats comes to learn that life has a way of figuring itself out, whether in this one or the next.

Is It Any Good?

Though it teeters on the verge of being strange, there's still something quite magical and elegant about Hooper's adaptation of Webber's classic show. Bringing a musical from stage to screen is no easy feat, but he pulls it off. That said, for those who aren't familiar with musical theater, acting for the stage, or the performing arts in general, the movie may at times be tough to follow. The pace is frequently slow, and the backstory and character development could be more detailed. But theater lovers new and old will appreciate this take on the popular musical -- and considering that it's been many years since Cats closed on Broadway, the movie is a great way to introduce a new generation to Eliot and Webber's work. The old-world feel, dimly lit set design, and rustic vibe are refreshing. Some of the CGI affects can feel unrealistic, but the beautiful vocals, the synchronized dance sequences, and the story's touching messages help make up for that. The soundtrack is very appropriate, soft and beautiful.

But how's the cast? Well, Hudson, Hayward, and Jason Derulo are definite standouts in their roles. As Rum Tum Tugger, Derulo is lively and entertaining, a scene stealer. As Grizabella, Hudson demonstrates great emotional range and gets to show off her stellar vocals. Hayward has a meek innocence as Victoria that lends itself to great vulnerability and transparency on-screen; she's lovely to watch. As Macavity, Idris Elba is a stretch, but his ability to take on his character's cynicism and dark nature shows his range. James Corden as Bustopher Jones is entertaining to say the least, and Taylor Swift as Bombularina is fun, seductive, and naughty -- her take on the character just works. Watching Rebel Wilson commit to playing Jennyanydots is lots of fun, and veteran actress Dench is quite fitting as the wise sage Old Deuteronomy. The dance choreography, paired with the songs, helps the entire ensemble shine. Seeing all these classically trained dancers and singers perform offers a positive example for kids and young adults, proving that hard work and discipline have benefits. And the movie's positive themes -- finding the courage to let go of pain, embracing new beginnings, and understanding that you belong -- are worth noting. It can be strange and over the top, but Cats is also unique, and there's something to be said for that.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about some of Cats ' major themes, including the idea of an underdog getting a new beginning. In what ways are Victoria and Grizabella given a new beginning in this movie? What are some of the obstacles that they overcome?

Though a kitten, Victoria has a compassionate heart. In what ways does Victoria show empathy and compassion for Grizabella? In what way does Victoria inspire Grizabella to try to live again? In what ways does Grizabella eventually show courage ?

Old Deuteronomy is a very wise cat who's had the opportunity to live many lives. In her old age and wisdom, what character strengths does she display? In the movie, she rejects the request of the always conniving Macavity. What does her decision to deny his request say about her integrity ?

In the movie, the entire cast works as an ensemble. What is an ensemble? In what ways does working as an ensemble require humility , discipline, and teamwork ?

The performing arts are heavily featured in the film. How do dancing, singing, and poetry contribute to the production?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 20, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : April 7, 2020
• Cast : Judi Dench , Jennifer Hudson , Idris Elba , James Corden , Taylor Swift
• Director : Tom Hooper
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Musical
• Topics : Cats, Dogs, and Mice , Music and Sing-Along
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Courage , Empathy
• Run time : 110 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : some rude and suggestive humor
• Last updated : June 22, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert

Into the Woods

Musicals for kids, dance movies, related topics.

• Cats, Dogs, and Mice
• Music and Sing-Along

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• 79% Cuckoo Link to Cuckoo
• 97% Dìdi Link to Dìdi
• 96% Good One Link to Good One

New TV Tonight

• 58% The Umbrella Academy: Season 4
• 100% Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Season 1
• 80% Mr. Throwback: Season 1
• -- Dance Moms: A New Era: Season 1
• -- Blue Ribbon Baking Championship: Season 1
• -- Love Is Blind: UK: Season 1
• -- The Mallorca Files: Season 3
• -- Taken Together: Who Killed Lyric and Elizabeth?: Season 1
• -- PD True: Season 1
• -- Yo Gabba GabbaLand!: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 83% A Good Girl's Guide to Murder: Season 1
• 97% Batman: Caped Crusader: Season 1
• 100% Women in Blue: Season 1
• 85% House of the Dragon: Season 2
• 80% Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• 100% Supacell: Season 1
• 78% Presumed Innocent: Season 1
• 89% Sunny: Season 1
• 77% Lady in the Lake: Season 1
• 97% The Old Man: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• 97% Batman: Caped Crusader: Season 1 Link to Batman: Caped Crusader: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

All Blake Lively Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Best Rom-Coms and Romance Movies of 2024

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Sing Sing ’s Colman Domingo Talks Fashion as He Breaks Down His Career

Captain America: Brave New World : Release Date, Trailer, Cast & More

• Trending on RT
• Re-Release Calendar
• Popular Complete Series
• Renewed and Cancelled TV
• Shows on Hulu

Cats: The Musical Reviews

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 23, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 0/5 | Jun 6, 2003

Sure it might be barely plotless fluff, but it's well executed barely plotless fluff, and doesn't try to pretend to be anything else.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 11, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 48/100 | Apr 18, 2002

• Newsletters
• Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

The Cats Movie Is a Void of Horny Confusion

The new adaptation understands that the uncoolness is the point..

With the release of Tom Hooper’s Cats movie adaptation, the public has a new opportunity to do what theater snobs and comedy writers have never stopped doing over the past 40 years: make fun of Cats . Adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber from the poems of T.S. Eliot’s  Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , the stage musical became an unexpected sensation on Broadway and around the globe despite—or perhaps because of—its odd premise, which involves a group of cats called Jellicles gathering in London to introduce themselves before deciding which of them will be allowed to travel up to the Heaviside layer and be reborn into a new life. That flimsy plot, coupled with the silliness of grown men and women writhing around in leotards meowling and licking themselves, has opened it up to no end of mockery.

I suspect that Hooper’s version of Cats will be met with the same amount of gleeful bafflement as the stage show, if the ( overblown ) horror over the movie’s “digital fur technology” when the trailer was released in July is any indication.* Hooper responded to the criticism by dialing back the fur so the characters look more human, and the movie is better off for it, though still a little unsettling. (Just when you think you’ve reasonably settled into the uncanny valley, Idris Elba’s coat comes off and you’re sucked even deeper into a void of horny confusion.) The hoopla over the trailer put Hooper in an awkward position, because if Cats is not completely weird, can it rightfully still be called Cats ? It’s not my favorite musical by a long shot, nor is it even Lloyd Webber’s best. But Cats ’ uncoolness, its willingness to be silly and self-serious and spectacular at the expense of taste, is its greatest strength, and Hooper’s version understands this.

That’s not to say that he treats the original as a sacred text. His and co-writer Lee Hall’s screenplay (though both Lloyd Webber and the author of “The Waste Land” share credits) responds to the most common complaint about Cats —its supposed lack of plot—by padding it. Their version follows kitten Victoria (ballet dancer Francesca Hayward), who in the opening scenes is abandoned in a junkyard by a woman we only see from the ankles down. (Though the scale of the city suggests that humans do also live there, that’s the most of them that ever appears on camera.) There Victoria learns about the Jellicle ball from Munkustrap (fellow ballet dancer Robbie Fairchild) and other cats, though she doesn’t yet know what a Jellicle is or whether she is one. The competition this year has a saboteur: Macavity (Elba), who uses magic to kidnap all the other contestants so that wise Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench) has no choice but to choose him.

Though Cats is traditionally a sung-through musical, Hooper, perhaps haunted by criticism of the relentless live singing in his adaptation of Les Misérables , sprinkles in some spoken interludes to break up the songs, mostly expository dialogue and uninspired cat (and in the case of James Corden’s character, fat cat) jokes. Alas, there are some wounds that no amount of laughter can heal: While theater pros like Fairchild pull off the live singing just fine, I cannot say the same for some of the more famous faces in the cast, such as Rebel Wilson and Jason Derulo, whose back-to-back songs early on constitute the movie’s roughest stretch. Fortunately, it recovers, and the songs that follow—and the dancing from the professionally trained portion of the cast—are giddy and gorgeous, particularly “Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat,” which sees them tap-dancing along a railroad track, and “Mr. Mistoffelees,” which Hooper reimagines to give the number more emotional heft. His signature close-up, low-angle shots are ideal for Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of “Memory” (which is about as powerful as you’d expect from that combination of singer and song) and Victoria singing the new, Taylor Swift–penned response song, “ Beautiful Ghosts ,” sung by Hayward (which is competent and sweet, if forgettable).

Die-hard fans of Cats will probably walk away with plenty of quibbles—like the choice to minimize the role of Rum Tum Tugger (Derulo), the contrarian cat, whose song is infuriatingly interrupted by dialogue despite being one of the best in the musical—while newcomers hoping to finally understand what all the Cats fuss is all about will probably walk away with more questions than answers. These questions will include Why do some cats have magic and others don’t? and Who built this human-size bar that seems to serve only milk? and How has an hour gone by without an appearance from Taylor Swift? and Why on earth does this movie exist? When Swift does finally show up as sultry Bombalurina, it’s with the confidence that only a true cat lover can embody—but it’s 80-year-old Ian McKellen who can best answer that last question, having the most fun of anyone as Gus the Theater Cat, lapping out of saucers and rubbing up against corners like the true thespian he is. And really, for all its flaws, what more could you possibly ask for from Cats ?

Correction, Dec. 18, 2019: This post originally misstated that the Cats trailer was released in October. It was released in July.

16 delightfully mean lines from the ‘Cats’ reviews

• Copy Link URL Copied!

Jellicle cats unite! The long-awaited, and much maligned, feature film adaptation of the blockbuster musical “Cats” finally arrives in theaters beginning Thursday night. And despite Universal’s attempt to keep the project as under wraps as it could , the studio had to screen it for critics at some point.

Following a world premiere in New York on Monday evening and multiple Tuesday press screenings, the reviews are now out. And they’re ... not good.

Despite an all-star cast led by Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Jennifer Hudson, Idris Elba, James Corden, Rebel Wilson, Taylor Swift and celebrated dancer Francesca Hayward , the movie — directed by “The King’s Speech” Oscar winner Tom Hooper — is living down to the low expectations set by its disastrous trailer .

Times critic Justin Chang says : “Given how often the movies tend to stereotype felines as smug, pampered homebodies, there are certainly worse characters one could spend time with, though I am hard-pressed at the moment to think of many worse movies. I say this with zero hyperbole and the smallest kernel of admiration. For the most part, ‘Cats’ is both a horror and an endurance test, a dispatch from some neon-drenched netherworld where the ghastly is inextricable from the tedious. Every so often it does paws — ahem, pause — to rise to the level of a self-aware hoot.”

Here are 16 more of the cattiest critical reactions from across the internet:

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY : “Actors dressing up in cat costumes has been fine for a musical-theater phenomenon going on nearly 40 years, which honestly would have been fine for the big-screen version, too... But the wider shots where the kitties move in quick, random action are often distracting, and certain cat personas just never look quite right. Elba’s Macavity is fine with clothes on yet eerily bizarre as a naked cat, though the actual nightmare fuel occurs when human faces are put on tiny mice and Rockette-esque cockroaches.”

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter : “Jennifer Hudson tirelessly over-emotes in the role; she limps around hemorrhaging snot and looking either miserable or terrified, like she’s been watching the dailies.”

Manohla Dargis, New York Times : “It is tough to pinpoint when the kitschapalooza called ‘Cats’ reaches its zenith or its nadir, which are one and the same. The choices are legion: Judi Dench gliding in as Old Deuteronomy, a Yoda-esque fluff ball with a huge ruff who brings to mind the Cowardly Lion en route to a drag ball as Queen Elizabeth I; the tap dancing Skimbleshanks (Steven McRae), dressed, unlike most of the furries — in red pants and suspenders, no less — leading a Pied Piper parade; or Taylor Swift, as Bombalurina, executing a joyless burlesque shimmy after descending on the scene astride a crescent moon that ejaculates iridescent catnip.”

Robert Abele, The Wrap : “Tom Hooper’s jarring fever dream of a spectacle is like something that escaped from Dr. Moreau’s creature laboratory instead of a poet’s and a composer’s feline (uni)verse, an un-catty valley hybrid of physical and digital that unsettles and crashes way more often than it enchants.”

Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly : “What is ‘Cats’? Music, madness, a hairball in the cosmos ... Even after 110 tumbling, tail-swishing, deeply psychedelic minutes, it’s hard to know if you ever really knew anything — except that C is for ‘Cats,’ C is for Crazy, and C is probably the grade this cinematic lunacy deserves, in the sense of making any sense at all.”

Ty Burr, Boston Globe “In fact, there are moments in ‘Cats’ I would gladly pay to unsee, including the baby mice with faces of young girls and the tiny chorus line of cockroach Rockettes — again, with human faces — that Jennyanydots gleefully swallows with a crunch. Anyone who takes small children to this movie is setting them up for winged-monkey levels of night terrors.”

John Nugent, Empire : “Neither human nor cat, they all look like laboratory mutants put through a Snapchat filter. Your brain will never comprehend it. It’s jarring from the first minute and remains jarring until the last.”

Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press : “There’s apparently enough groundbreaking technology used in ‘Cats’ for NASA to send a rocket to unexplored parts of the universe — perhaps to a far-off planet where cats sing, dance on two legs, and recite T.S. Eliot poetry in half-Cockney accents.”

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair : “The real villain here is Hooper, who has conceptualized a movie that claims to honor its performers while smothering them in digital makeup. Why even bother hiring the elastic, fluid dancers if their bodies were going to be rendered so inhuman? Or, rather, so unnatural—they’re not supposed to be humans, after all. In doing so much to make the world of ‘Cats’ something approaching credible, Hooper completely fails imagination, ignoring the disbelief happily suspended for decades by the millions of fans of the stage musical. Nothing is accomplished by turning ‘Cats’ into a garish CGI experiment, and just about everything is lost.”

Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post : “Having just watched ‘Cats,’ the movie version of the hit musical about something called ‘Jellicle cats,’ it is clear that ‘Jellicle’ must be cat-speak for ‘wackadoodle.’”

Peter Debruge, Variety : “From the first shot — of just such a blue moon, distressingly fake, flanked by poufy cat-shaped clouds — to the last, ‘Cats’ hurts the eyes and, yes, the ears, as nearly all the musical numbers, including ‘Memory,’ have been twisted into campy, awards-grubbing cameos for big-name stars in bad-CG cat drag.”

Alison Willmore, Vulture : “To assess ‘Cats’ as good or bad feels like the entirely wrong axis on which to see it ... Mostly, though, it’s like an acting exercise allowed to grow to an incomprehensible scale, and then given lyrics drawn from a selection of light poems by T.S. Eliot.”

Will Gompertz, BBC : “The harsh truth is the film feels plastic, it has no heart or soul. That might well be a problem with the source material and its suitability for a transfer from stage to screen. Notwithstanding notable successes, the fact is not everything that is a hit in one medium works in another.”

Eric Kohn, Indiewire : “But there’s the rub: The argument against ‘Cats’ also makes the case for its existence, because everything ludicrous about the show has been cranked up to 11, with a restless artificial camera and actors so keen on upstaging one another with excessive song-and-dance numbers they may as well be competing for a Heaviside Layer of their own.”

Brian Lowry, CNN : “Ultimately, ‘Cats’ feels like a conspicuous waste, in what the studio is describing as an ‘epic musical.’ If the goal was to provide a holiday musical event that’s fun for the whole family, it’s a good idea in theory, packaged in the wrong litter box.”

Alissa Wilkinson, Vox : “It’s literally incredible. I hope I never see it again.”

More to Read

At CatCon, some pounce at JD Vance over ‘childless cat ladies’ remark

Aug. 4, 2024

Review: Gender-swapped ‘Company’ revival dazzles, capturing the spirit of Sondheim

Aug. 3, 2024

Review: ‘Clue: Live on Stage’ reinvigorates the 1985 movie with mindless fun

Aug. 1, 2024

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

‘Stranger Things,’ a Tony winner? ‘The First Shadow’ is coming to Broadway

Aug. 6, 2024

Entertainment & Arts

How the creator of ‘Gilmore Girls’ reinvented ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ for a new generation

Aug. 5, 2024

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis’ ‘Warriors’ will be a concept album, not a stage musical

Two ambitious plays by Tom Jacobson on rise of Nazism are unsettling in their timeliness

July 31, 2024

Review: All-star 'Cats' stays out of the litter box with Taylor Swift and enchanting absurdity

A furry Taylor Swift sprinkles the contents of a bedazzled can of catnip to create a fog of intoxicating magical dust, and that’s not even in the top five truly insane things that happen in "Cats."

A bunch of well-known celebrities get turned into singing, scenery-chewing digital kitties in the utterly absurd yet oddly charming movie musical version of the Broadway hit. Director Tom Hooper brought a very earnest Oscar-nominated take on “Les Miserables” to the big screen, and with “Cats” (★★½ out of four; rated PG; in theaters nationwide Friday) he embraces the nonsensical, out-there nature of the original show while raising the spotlight of a supporting character who’s now the eyes, ears and paws of the audience through one strange journey.

'Cats': Taylor Swift stuns at premiere hours after getting snubbed by Oscars

‘I loved the weirdness of it’: Taylor Swift is totally down with the new ‘Cats’ movie

“Cats” the stage production doesn't have much of a plot and neither does the movie: It’s the annual night of the Jellicle Ball for a tribe of Jellicle cats, and one of them – “the Jellicle choice” – will be picked by wise Old Deuteronomy ( Judi Dench ) to be reborn into a new life. It’s a hairball-raising situation that brings out a bunch of contenders singing their Jellicle tunes as auditions, and Victoria (enchanting newcomer Francesca Hayward) witnesses it all with wide-eyed curiosity after being dumped in a back alley by a human.

(At this point you may be wondering what a "Jellicle" is. It's a name coined in the works of T.S. Eliot, whose cat-themed poetry was a basis for the original musical. In other words: Just go with it.)

Victoria meets a wide variety of colorful personalities, including Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), a prat-falling gumbie cat who uses her tail as a faux microphone; the flamboyant Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo), who struts and preens at the local Milk Bar; Gus the Theatre Cat (Ian McKellen), an over-the-hill actor who re-lives one of his great roles; and Grizabella ( Jennifer Hudson ), a former glamour cat who’s seen better days and is shunned by her fellow felines.

Not all of the Jellicle contestants are on the up and up. Macavity ( Idris Elba ), the self-proclaimed “monster of depravity,” is the criminal mystery cat whose chicanery knows no bounds. Swift plays one of his charges, bad girl Bombalurina, who purrs his song, and her teaming with Elba as a couple of mischievous critters is quite a sight.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” showtunes are seriously catchy, and if you’re not humming “Magical Mister Mistoffelees” afterward, you may not have a pulse. Those who aren't familiar with the musical probably at least know the famous ballad “Memory,” and when Hudson belts that chorus, it’s a sensational, tear-jerking moment. Lloyd Webber and Swift teamed up for the new "Beautiful Ghosts,"  Victoria’s signature song, and the addition acts as an interesting counterpoint to “Memory.”

Unfortunately, the visual effects aren’t as consistently good. Actors dressing up in cat costumes has been fine for a musical-theater phenomenon going on nearly 40 years, which honestly would have been fine for the big-screen version, too. The technology is there so they use it, and the good news is that details like characters’ ears especially get a boost with some CGI help. But the wider shots where the kitties move in quick, random action are often distracting, and certain cat personas just never look quite right. Elba's Macavity is fine with clothes on yet eerily bizarre as a naked cat, though the actual nightmare fuel occurs when human faces are put on tiny mice and Rockette-esque cockroaches.

The choreography by Tony Award winner Andy Blankenbuehler (“Hamilton”) is top notch and lets the two “Cats” highlights, who are household names only for ballet aficionados, showcase multiple talents. Robbie Fairchild plays Munkustrap, a flexible narrator of sorts, though Hayward is the real find, a principal dancer with London’s Royal Ballet whose dance moves are all on point, can carry a tune and exudes dazzling charm.

“Cats” isn’t for everyone – much of it is a cheesy, B-grade affair seemingly crafted solely to take over midnight-movie slots from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Those with an open mind, though, as well as little kids and the T-Swift posse, might find it somewhat pawesome.

‘Cats’: A Broadway Musical Adaptation Straight Outta the Litter Box

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Attention, moviegoers searching for the worst movie of the year: We have a late-breaking winner. Cats slips in right under the radar and easily scores as the bottom of the 2019 barrel — and arguably of the decade. Even Michael Bay’s trash trilogy of soul-destroying Transformers movies can’t hold a candle. What happened?

Wasn’t the stage production of Cats — music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by poet T.S. Eliot — an award-winning smash from Broadway to Tokyo? It was. But in this all-star, all-awful screen version, directed by Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech’s , Les Miserables ), everything that should work goes calamitously wrong. The first trailer earned hisses on social media. The full movie, inert and as indigestible as a hairball, is much, much worse.

Shot on a soundstage to suggest a bad feline-themed Halloween party, the film — like the show — is based on Eliot’s beloved 1939 poetry collection, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. That means that over a single night in London, a tribe of junkyard cats called Jellicles run a talent show to prove their worthiness to the chief judge, Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench, a Dame who deserved better). The prize? The chosen feline will ascend to cat heaven, known as the Heaviside Layer, and be reborn into a better life where presumably no one will ever be forced to sit through this movie.

Talent is misused all through the film: There’s Sir Ian McKellan as Gus the Theater Cat, singing of his lost youth; Idris Elba as Macavity, the monster of depravity; and — God help her — Taylor Swift as Bombalurina, his accomplice in crime. Hooper traps the actors in an airless, lifeless bubble of a film that scarcely gives them room to breathe, much less develop a character. Instead, he misguidedly covers them in digital fur and bizarre makeup.

The opening number about Jellicle cats, in which the word “Jellicle” is repeatedly drilled into your ears until you want to cry for mercy, serves as a warning of the punishment ahead. Dreamgirls Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson fares best at pretending she’s in something worthwhile. Now that’s acting! As the aging glamour cat Grizabella, Hudson nearly busts a lung over-emoting on the show’s only memorable song, “Memory.” To hear this musical-theater standard done glorious, haunting justice, listen to Betty Buckley’s take on the tune — she won a Tony award for playing the part in the Broadway version. Her immortal version of the tune actually does stick in the, well, memory.

Editor’s picks

Every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history.

The rest you will definitely want to banish to oblivion. It falls to genius Hamilton choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler to adapt Gillian Lynne’s stage dances for the screen. His work may be impressive, but you’d never know it from the manic way Hooper keeps cutting from long shots to medium shots to close-ups so that the eye can never appreciate the simple beauty of a full body in graceful motion.

To give narrative shape to a show that has none, the director and his co-writer Lee Hall have added a new character: She’s Victoria, played by ballerina Francesca Hayward as our guide to various cat habitats from Trafalgar Square to a railroad track. Lloyd Webber has also included a new song, “Beautiful Ghosts,” shunning existing verses from Eliot for another poetical T.S. (think “Blank Space” and “Shake It Off”). The song, meant to enhance “Memory” and perhaps improve on it, fails in both cases. Sorry, Ms. Swift.

And so we’re left with a movie in which assorted stars step up to do their big number and vanish. There’s Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots, dancing with cockroaches. And there’s James Corden , hamming it to the hilt and beyond as Bustopher Jones, the gluttonous cat. And look! It’s Jason Derulo as the self-admiring Rum Tum Tugger. The lesser known Laurie Davidson plays the magical Mr. Mistoffelees and his big number is actually — wait for it — passable. The moment is fleeting.

Let the sheer grinding monotony of Cats stand as a measuring stick for future cinematic takes on Broadway musicals that hope to match its unparalleled, bottom-feeding dreadfulness. In his prize-winning Angels in America, playwright Tony Kushner wrote a scene in which the rat-bastard lawyer Roy Cohn is on the phone sucking up to a client who wants tickets to a Broadway smash. When the caller says, “ Cats, ” Cohn sticks his fingers down his throat and mock vomits. Look for that gesture to be repeated by all who must endure this hellish fiasco of a film version. This disaster of a movie shouldn’t happen to a dog.

How Do You Market a Domestic Violence Movie? Not Like 'It Ends With Us'

• By CT Jones

SNL's Chaotic Opening Night Captured in First Trailer for 'Saturday Night'

• live from new york
• By Daniel Kreps

'Borderlands' Is an Insult to Gamers, Movie Lovers and Carbon-Based Life Forms

• MOVIE REVIEW
• By David Fear

Steve Martin Won't Be Playing Tim Walz on 'SNL' After All

• Casting Call
• By Kalia Richardson

Cardi B, Charli XCX, Barbra Streisand, More Celebs Endorse Kamala Harris for President

• Pledging Support
• By Krystie Lee Yandoli and Tomás Mier

Most Popular

French pole vaulter's bulge costs him an olympic medal, wesley snipes' blade breaks two guinness world records, suge knight believes fbi gave ben affleck compromising jennifer lopez footage from diddy raids, florida lawyer blows up communist statues, egypt's new mega-mummy museum, london's national gallery revamp, and more: morning links for august 6, 2024, you might also like, ‘shogun’ star hiroyuki sanada on season 2 plans, his emmy nom and why he wants to do a rom-com or musical next, under armour losses mount but less than expected, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, ampas elects new board of officers to run academy foundation, scrubs maker figs bets on team usa as q2 costs rise.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

• Entertainment
• Celebrities
• Ticket Sales

Recommended

Johnny Oleksinski

‘cats’ review: movie musical is a total disaster.

Please wipe this movie from my “Memory.”

That would be “Cats,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit Broadway musical-turned-screen-litter box. The film has been a source of freak-show fascination all year long, from the cuckoo casting announcements — Judi Dench and Taylor Swift! — to the creepy CGI fur . But weirdness isn’t the issue here. “Cats,” which is based on T.S. Eliot’s poetry collection “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” ran on Broadway successfully for 18 years, and nobody ever went in expecting something traditional.

Director Tom Hooper’s movie is a huge failure because he’s completely abandoned the fundamentals of what made “Cats” a terrific show: sublime music, captivating dance and an intoxicating atmosphere. Instead, the director chooses to shake the camera around as though he can’t find his footing, uses dreadful CGI-human hybrids that look worse than makeup and needlessly buttresses the plot with exposition.

Yeah, Tom, let’s really focus on the plot of “Cats.”

Woefully watch as Hooper and writer Lee Hall throw in a frame story in which a kitten, Victoria (Francesca Hayward) , is abandoned in an alleyway — Merry Christmas! — and gets inaugurated into the Jellicle tribe. In case the audience gets lost during what’s essentially a song contest, they include an explainer from Robbie Fairchild’s Munkustrap: “Come see a cat who is competing to be the Jellicle choice!” To give Idris Elba more to do, his villainous Macavity now skulks around catnapping all the film’s A-list stars, abandoning them on a barge in the Thames. (I suspect this is also because the studio couldn’t get James Corden, Jason Derulo and Rebel Wilson to do the ensemble dances.)

Hooper, who also wrecked “Les Misérables” with his indulgences, brings back what’s become his signature: live singing. The tracks are not prerecorded to guarantee the actors sound, you know, good, but rather are sung au naturel as the scene is being filmed. Remember Anne Hathaway’s weepy haircut in “Miz”? Well, the actors in “Cats” — save for Swift as Bombalurina and Jason Derulo as the Rum Tum Tugger — are barely passable, with wobbly voices that struggle to stand out or blend. Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson awkwardly sobs through the musical’s most famous song, “Memory,” and shockingly can’t comfortably hit the notes.

The script, such as it is, has been tinkered with by the filmmakers, and you don’t have to be a scholar to spot their schlock. For instance, I highly doubt Nobel Prize winner Eliot wrote such lines as “Do you think he just got neutered? Because those notes are high!” and “Oh no, look what the cat dragged in.”

A word about the dancing. Original choreographer Gillian Lynne died last year, but left an indelible mark with musicals such as “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera.” Her choreography for this show was a perfect mix of animalism, ballet and modern movement. But much of it has been jettisoned for Andy Blankenbuehler’s (“Hamilton”) more organic street dancing. It’s not only a shame that Lynne’s famous work wasn’t immortalized on-screen, but Blankenbuehler’s new moves are a snooze. He turns “The Jellicle Ball” from a showstopper to a watch-checker.

Over the years, Lloyd Webber has had a string of film clunkers, including “Evita” (Madonna, ugh) and “Phantom of the Opera” (Gerard Butler, ugh). “Cats” and Hudson easily make the ugh list, if not the upcoming Oscar nominations. But there are three worthwhile aspects of this movie, all actors giving it everything they’ve got. They would be legends Dench and Ian McKellen, naturally, but also a little-known 27-year-old charmer named Laurie Davidson, who plays Mr. Mistoffelees.

In the first song of the musical, a tribe of felines sing, “Jellicles can and Jellicles do.” Hooper’s film prompts the question: Should they?

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

A new musical reimagines 'Cats' as it should be

Tracie Hunte

A new version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Cats" sets it in the queer, competitive ballroom scene - and it finally makes sense.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

• AV Undercover

Film Features

• More Film Features

• More Film Lists

• More Film News

• More Film Reviews