Cats: Stars feline fine in bewitching movie musical romp

Motion capture hasn’t been used this effectively since Avatar or Planet Of the Apes, writes Vicky Roach–

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CATS

Three and a half stars

Director: Tom Hooper

Starring: Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Jennifer Hudson

Rating: G

Running time: 110 minutes

Verdict: There’s nothing else like it

FIRST, a confession. I haven’t actually seen the stage version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s seminal ’80s musical Cats.

A bunch of musical theatre stars dressed in unitards and pretending to be moggies? The basic premise was enough to put me off.

So unlike tens of millions of other people, I can’t compare Tom Hooper’s hotly-anticipation film adaptation to the stage production.

What I can offer is a fresh perspective.

Francesca Hayward (centre) in a scene from Cats.

Judged in and of its own right, Hooper’s version of the sung-through musical is a curious creature. Whether or not you ultimately warm to the out-there story about a tribe of cats who hold an annual sing-off to decide which of them will ascend to a new life in the heavens, Hooper’s CGI-live action hybrid is oddly bewitching.

The magic starts with Hooper’s stylised, theatrical setting, which offers a street-level perspective of London with Dickensian undertones.

But it’s the film’s anthropomorphic artistry that truly captivates, due in equal parts to human performance and digitally craftsmanship.

Taylor Swift in a scene from Cats.

Motion capture hasn’t been used this effectively since Avatar or Planet Of the Apes.

There’s something genuinely fascinating about that point at which the fur meets the flesh and the characters’ twitching
ears are oddly expressive (their tails, on the other hand, feel more like necessary appendages).

Giving us permission to give over entirely to the creative conceit are committed performances from two of the best actors in the business — Judi Dench and Ian McKellen.

The grand dame of British theatre can’t sing — it’s almost a relief when her quavering vocals stop — but Dench’s physical performance (in close collaboration with hair, costume, make-up and visual effects) grounds the film.

Judi Dench as Old Deuteronomy in Cats.

With her flea-bitten ginger fur coat, wrinkles and whiskers, Dench’s Old Deuteronomy is fabulously feline (it’s also the first time the role has been represented as female).

McKellen finds a similar kind of vulnerable, ancient dignity in Gus the Theatre Cat.

At the other end of the spectrum is the naive, abandoned kitten Victoria, played by Francesa Hayward, a principal ballerina with The Royal Ballet.

James Corden and Rebel Wilson provide comic relief as the gluttonous Bustopher Jones and stagestruck Jennyanydots respectively — there’s a terrific sequence in which Wilson’s lazy tabby orchestrates a Busby Berkeley-style dance routine with an army of cockroaches. Idris Elba adds to his list of villains as the green-eyed Macavity.

Idris Elba and Francesca Hayward in Cats.

Taylor Swift makes a cameo appearance as Bombalurina, but it’s Jason Derulo and Jennifer Hudson who do the heavy lifting in the vocal department as the arrogant Rum Tum Tugger and the mangy former glamour queen Grizabella respectively.

Hudson’s raw, tearful rendition of Memory is a showstopper.

Not even the ridiculous final number — The Ad-dressing of Cats — can undercut this film’s strange charisma.

Preposterously entertaining.

Opens December 26

Originally published as Cats: Stars feline fine in bewitching movie musical romp