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‘Cats’ Movie Shredded for Being Bizarre But Not Bizarre Enough

‘Cats’ Movie Shredded for Being Bizarre But Not Bizarre Enough

(Bloomberg) -- “Cats,” the feline fantasy based on the 1981 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, was never going to please everyone.

But the early reviews suggest it may not appeal to much of anyone. An awkward adaptation to the screen and unnerving computer animation -- based on source material that was already polarizing -- left many critics wondering if the film should have ever been made.

“With its grotesque design choices and busy, metronomic editing, ‘Cats’ is as uneasy on the eyes as a Hollywood spectacle can be, tumbling into an uncanny valley between mangy realism and dystopian artifice,” wrote Justin Chang at the Los Angeles Times.

“My eyes are burning. Oh God, my eyes,” said the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr, who called the film a disaster.

As of Thursday morning, only about 17% of critics had recommended the movie on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. That would make it a career worst for British director Tom Hooper, who won an Academy Award for “The King’s Speech.”

Telegraph critic Tim Robey gave the film zero stars, the first time he’s done so since “Old Dogs” in 2010.

“The only realistic way to fix ‘Cats’ would be to spay it, or simply pretend it never happened,” he said. “It’s an all-time disaster -- a rare and star-spangled calamity which will leave jaws littered across floors and agents unemployed.”

The film, based on a hit Broadway show known for the song “Memory,” cost $95 million to make, according to Box Office Mojo. It touts an impressive cast of singers and actors, including Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen and Taylor Swift. But the trailers for the movie, depicting humanoid cats prancing around oddly scaled London sets, invited ridicule on social media.

The film is coming out in the U.S. this weekend as a bit of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” counterprogramming. But the Universal Pictures movie is only expected to take in $12 million in its debut, according to Box Office Pro.

At the New York Times, Manohla Dargis wondered if the movie wasn’t bad enough to reach “so bad it’s good” territory.

“A doctoral thesis could be written on how this misfire sputtered into existence,” she wrote. Hooper “is nowhere near vulgar enough for the challenge he was hired for, which is to translate Andrew Lloyd Webber’s money-printing musical to the big screen.”

Still, some critics warmed to the weirdness.

“It’s surreal, hallucinatory, and mostly in a good way,” wrote Kerry Lengel at the Arizona Republic. “The CGI-enhanced costumes work pretty well, and there’s a real ‘Alice in Wonderland’ feel to the oversize sets (from fancy Victorian sitting rooms to the trash-filled alley).”

And even reviewers who panned the film said they had a hard time rooting against it.

“It’s an ugly stray who smells bad and should not be invited into your home, certainly,” Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson wrote. “And yet it is its own kind of living creature, worthy of at least some basic compassion.”

--With assistance from Christopher Palmeri.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Turner in Los Angeles at nturner7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards III

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