Cats Review

Cats works on stage because the performers are visibly human bodies in makeup, dancing. The film's central choice is to replace that with digital fur applied to photographed actors, and the result is neither one thing nor the other: human faces, human hands, feline proportions that shift between shots. Nothing else survives it, because every frame asks the audience to resolve what it is looking at and there is no answer available.

Scale compounds the problem. Set sizes change constantly, so a cat is mouse sized in one shot and human sized in the next, which destroys any sense of place. Universal took the extraordinary step of sending theaters a corrected version with revised effects days after release, which tells you the work was still being finished as it opened.

There is real quality here and it deserves naming. Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography is inventive, and Francesca Hayward, a principal at the Royal Ballet, dances beautifully whenever the camera holds still long enough to let her. Jennifer Hudson sings Memory with everything she has, and the number nearly lands on the strength of the voice alone. Ian McKellen and Taylor Swift are game throughout.

The new framing dialogue is thin, the Jellicle premise is restated repeatedly without becoming clearer, and the film has no dramatic question to answer, so the numbers arrive in a row rather than in an order. It took worst picture at the Razzies and effectively closed out Hooper's run of prestige musicals.