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Cats

2019

Tom Hooper

Francesca Hayward, Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench, Taylor Swift ...

3.1

2,904

Musical. Drama A tribe of cats called the Jellicles who must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life... The London stage production ran for 21 years, while the Broadway stage production ran for 18 years, making Cats the sixth-longest-running West End show and the fourth-longest-running Broadway show.

	Media	Author	Review
		David Rooney The Hollywood Reporter	"Cat-tastrophic (...) While the desired effect seems to be one of enchanting artifice (...) the visuals have a harsh quality that points up the heavy reliance on CGI components throughout"
		Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Attention, moviegoers searching for the worst movie of the year: We have a late-breaking winner (...) Rating: 0 (out of 5)"
		Peter Debruge Variety	"'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."
		Ty Burr Boston Globe	"My eyes are burning. Oh God, my eyes (…) Rating: ½ (out of 4)"
		Justin Chang Los Angeles Times	"There are certainly worse characters one could spend time with, though I am hard-pressed at the moment to think of many worse movies (...) 'Cats' is both a horror and an endurance test"
		Brian Truitt USA Today	"[It] isn’t for everyone (...) Those with an open mind, though, as well as little kids and the T-Swift posse, might find it somewhat pawesome (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"
		Manohla Dargis The New York Times	"A doctoral thesis could be written on how this misfire sputtered into existence (...) Hooper’s mistake is that he’s tried to class up the joint"
		Brian Lowry CNN	"[It] isn't quite the unmitigated disaster that some feared (...) but it's not good, delivering a mostly incoherent adaptation of the long-running musical"
		Alison Willmore Vulture	"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."
		Leah Greenblatt Entertainment Weekly	"[Tom Hooper] doesn’t so much direct the action as duly place Andrew Lloyd’s Weber musical on camera"
		Matt Dougherty IGN	"No special effect can save you from the contents of this litter box (...) The big tragedy here is how this tech neuters the talent on display in the big dance numbers."
		Eric Kohn IndieWire	"An absurd and exuberant mess (...) It’s a spectacular paradox of a movie — at once too crazy for this world and not quite crazy enough."
		Richard Lawson Vanity Fair	"Tom Hooper’s unpleasant film does the 1980s’ strangest musical smash an injustice (...) The real villain here is Hooper, who has conceptualized a movie that claims to honor its performers"
		Johnny Oleksinski New York Post	"A total disaster (...) Tom Hooper’s movie is a huge failure because he’s completely abandoned the fundamentals of what made 'Cats' a terrific show (…) Rating: ★ (out of 4)"
		Matt Goldberg Collider	"If you try to view 'Cats' straight (as I did) it’s a mind-warping experience where nothing works"
		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 (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"'Pretend to be cats!' says a director. They reply... 'Me? How?' (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"
		Tim Robey Telegraph	"A sinister, all-time disaster from which no one emerges unscathed (…) Rating: 0 (out of 5)"
		Nicholas Barber BBC	"The CGI fur might be the best thing about the whole project (...) While 'Cats' is admirable on some level, that’s not the same as being enjoyable (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Chris Hunneysett Mirror	"Fans of musical theatre will possibly lap it up, though the kids in my preview screening were noticeably quiet throughout, and it left me feline embarrassed for all concerned (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		David Sexton London Evening Standard	"Nearly as obscene as 'The Human Centipede' (...) It all just feels so wrong. Whether they are human or feline, what on earth has happened in those smoothed out groins, so much exposed by the leotards? (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Clarisse Loughrey The Independent	"Improbable and entirely indescribable (...) 'Cats' is destined to go down in glorious infamy (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Sandy Schaefer Screen Rant	"An audaciously bizarre spectacle sure to delight and divide as much as the original musical does.(…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		Alan Corr RTÉ	"This is so bad it may not even make the grade as a future camp classic (...) I was almost lost in admiration at how awful this movie really is (…) Rating: ½ (out of 5)"
		Paul Whitington Irish Independent	"This is cinema, or it’s supposed to be, but Tom Hooper’s film lurches unimaginatively from song to song, some of which seem to drag on forever (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Tara Brady Irish Times	"The biggest problem is the disturbing 'digital fur technology'. Why do they have breasts but no nipples? Why do some have furry feet and others shoes? (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Chris Wasser Irish Independent	"A silly and sloppy offering of irredeemable codswallop (...) A painful, thundering bore of a film (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"
		Deirdre Molumby entertainment.ie	"Within minutes of watching 'Cats', I wanted to leave the theatre (...) You can’t even enjoy it on a 'so bad it’s good' level because it’s unbelievably boring as well (…) Rating: ★ (out of 5)"

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