You’ll be dazzled by this all-star array of kitty glitter
CATS is weird, rather in the way that dreams are weird. You emerge from the cinema just as you might wake up after a torrid night, piecing together bizarre images, some unsettling, some uproarious, some downright demented, that don’t seem to belong in the same story.
Rebel Wilson on her back, legs akimbo, scratching her ample belly. Taylor Swift in a hairy onesie. Judi Dench swamped by a huge fur coat and looking disconcertingly like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard Of Oz. A greeneyed Idris Elba at the top of Nelson’s Column.
That’s just a small sample of the extraordinary images assailing your mind. People have sought psychiatric help for less. And yet somehow, it all works. Unlike just about all my counterparts on other papers, I’ve retracted my critical claws.
Those claws were out as soon as the trailer was released in July. It was our first look at how director Tom Hooper had adapted Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical, which was itself an interpretation of T.S. Eliot’s 1939 poetry collection, Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats. On the whole, the response was scathing.
Lots of critics prepared catty metaphors, yet now, I actually think that eight out of ten cinema
goers will enjoy it — as long as they go along prepared for what they’re about to see, which is essentially a feline-themed ballet.
That is why the Royal Ballet star Francesca Hayward plays the lead, Victoria the White Cat, and it is a truly charming performance.
Those who have seen the stage musical will recognise that the role has been beefed up, making her the focus of this story about a motley feline band, London’s Jellicle cats, one of whom must be chosen by the venerable Old Deuteronomy (Dench) to ascend high above the earth and be reborn.
Not everyone will think all this is the cat’s whiskers. But if ever there was a Christmas release that will be steadfastly avoided by some, and rapturously embraced by others, this is it. In other words, those who expect to love it will see it; and those who think they’ll hate every minute won’t bother to test their preconceptions.
I’m not sure I’d entirely endorse that line from theologian Albert Schweitzer that there are only two refuges from the misery of life: music and cats. I’m a dog man myself. But Hooper has made a surprisingly good fist of bringing it to life. A verSion of these reviews appeared in earlier editions.