Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *

Cast: Francesca Hayward, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Rebel Wilson, Jennifer Hudson, James Corden, Laurie Davidson, Naoimh Morgan, Danny Collins, Jason Derulo, Robbie Fairchild, Mette Towley, Daniela Norman, Jaih Betote, Larry Bourgeois, Laurent Bourgeois, Jonadette Carpio, Ray Winstone, Steven McRae, Taylor Swift.

There are so many ways in which you can believe you are creating magic on screen, and there are many ways in which that magic can turn sour if the act of hubris is not dealt with, not swallowed to the point where humility can be seen to tread the same boards as the pride you wish to feel; the sense of modesty you wish to convey in your vision.

Based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and the subsequent stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tom Hopper’s Cats arguably means well, it’s heart is in the right place, but its beat is not just irregular, it plods at best, and is stone cold, almost incoherent, and frighteningly inaudible, without passion of any life, for the rest of its time on screen.

If you take the marvellously professional Francesca Hayward upon face value for her dancing alone, if you dispel everything else around her to the wings, then you will feel the beauty of her profession unfolding before your very eyes, you will feel as mesmerised as you perhaps were when you first saw Gene Kelly perform that famous dance routine in Singin’ In The Rain, Ginger Rogers being swept along in the Gay Divorcee, truly extraordinary feats of physicality to which leave you breathless. If you were to be myopic in your appreciation, to just watch Ms. Hayward dance, then it could be argued that the film was a success.

However, such notions are poorly conceived, such notions are folly when placed in the larger picture, and there is no getting past the inherent problem that Cats is quite honestly one of the disturbingly poor films, not just of the decade, but perhaps for all time in the world of cinema. It would be cruel to call it an embarrassment, but that is exactly what it is, and a shame for all concerned.

As far as cinema goes, this kind of production deserves another home, one where it gets the protection it needs, where it can lie in peace. Cats may have nine lives; this particular feline though didn’t even make it through one unscathed.

Ian D. Hall