Cats (2019)    Universal/Musical-Fantasy-Comedy    RT: 110 minutes    Rated PG (some rude and suggestive humor)    Director: Tom Hooper    Screenplay: Lee Hall and Tom Cooper    Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber    Cinematography: Christopher Ross    Release date: December 20, 2019 (US)    Cast: James Corden, Laurie Davidson, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Francesca Hayward, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, Ray Winstone, Les Twins.    Box Office: $27.2M (US)/$74.6M (World)

Rating: *

 Cats, the long-awaited adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash Broadway musical, the fourth-longest running show (18 years!) in their history, made me want to scratch my eyes out. It’s a real dog. I sat there the whole time with this in mind: “I know I’m supposed to be entertained by all this jazz, but somehow I’m not.” It should be fun, but it really isn’t. It’s actually CAT-astrophic.

 For those who don’t know, Cats was to the 80s what Hamilton is today. It was the hottest selling show on Broadway. You couldn’t get tickets to this thing. It was only natural that somebody would eventually attempt a film adaptation. It languished in development hell for years. At one time, Steven Spielberg was going to do an animated version. Now it’s finally been done and it’s for the birds. I only hope that when they get around to doing a movie of Hamilton, they do a whole hell of a lot better than this clunky bore that in no way, shape or form helps an uninitiated person like me (I never saw the show) understand its appeal. It’s one of the most unappealing movies I’ve ever seen, visually and otherwise.

 Directed by Tom Hooper (Les Miserables), Cats is a weaving together of whimsical cat poems from T.S. Eliot’s 1939 collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. A plot is all but non-existent. A tribe of cats called “Jellicles” living in the dark alleys of London compete in a singing competition to determine who will be the next one to ascend to a place called “The Heaviside Layer” where they will move onto the next of their nine lives. The winner is determined by the wise elder Jellicle “Old Deuteronomy” (Dench, Philomena). The main conflict is the villainous cat Macavity (Elba, Beasts of No Nation) who kidnaps potential Jellicle winners for reasons left unexplained.

 That’s really it as far as story goes. Cats is basically a bunch of scenes of actors in cat costumes singing and dancing. The main character is Victoria (Royal Ballet dancer Francesca Hayward), the newest member of the tribe, a white cat abandoned by her humans. The other cats show up to find out who she is. Then they sing a number about the importance of names or some such nonsense. That’s when the movie lost me. It’s hard to follow what’s going on because the lyrics are incomprehensible. Then we meet other cats like Rebel Wilson’s fat, lazy Jennyanydots who trains mice and cockroaches as a night job. Her number features human actors in mice and cockroach costumes. That’s weird, but more than that, the character acts a lot like Rebel Wilson. I’m pretty sure this differs from Webber’s interpretation of Eliot’s character.

 Cats fails on many levels, but none as bad as it does as a musical, its most fundamental level. Other than the show’s signature song “Memory”, I’m not familiar with its songbook. After seeing the movie, I still can’t name any of the songs. I can’t even remember a single melody. They’re utterly forgettable. The only other one I recall (and vaguely at that) is the Taylor Swift song “Beautiful Moon” written specifically to qualify for a Best Original Song Oscar. Where Hooper really botches it is the choreography. It’s edited in such a way that choreography is a moot point. In a musical, it should be enough for the director to point his camera at the actors and let them strut their stuff like they did in the days of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. There’s so much cross-cutting and crazy angles in Cats that it denies the audience the simple pleasure of watching dancers dance. The only good thing here is the graceful way Hayward moves.

 The one and only bright spot of Cats is Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of “Memory” near the end. Like she did with “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” in Dreamgirls, she really belts it out to great effect. For those few brief minutes, the movie comes to life. Compared to the other numbers, it’s a show-stopper. For the record, she plays Grizabella, an outcast cat who used to run with Macavity. I’ll give Hooper this; he did assemble an impressive cast that also includes Ian McKellen (Gandalf himself), late night host James Corden, R&B singer Jason Derulo and pop singer Taylor Swift. The problem is we don’t get to know many of the characters outside their one number. They show up, sing and blend back in with the cat pack.

 Now let’s talk about the tiger in the room. The rumor is apparently true. At the request of the director, a new print of Cats with “some improved special effects” is being shipped to theaters this weekend. I don’t know what they could possibly do to make this debacle look any less ghastly. The “cats”, a combination of costumes, prosthetics and CGI, have an unsettling appearance. They could easily co-star in a kid’s nightmare with the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. As for scale, it’s all wrong too. The cast is digitally shrunk down against oversize sets resulting in a wonky-looking movie. When the look of a fantasy-based musical is NOT pleasing to the eye, something went really, REALLY wrong.

 It’s possible that X-amount of years from now Cats will attain the cult status of great musical disasters like The Apple and Xanadu. Right now, it’s just a very bad movie that would be more at home in a litter box than the local multiplex. Somebody should have left it in the bag.