When it comes to stage musicals and their film adaptations, I’ve found that audiences value loyalty to the original source material. Some recent musical film adaptations, like Les Miserables, have been well-received, while others have not. So, I’m curious to see what musical theatre fans will think of how Director Tom Hooper has cinematically reimagined Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical Cats. I had the opportunity to go see a pre-release screening of the film on the 17th of December.

I’m a lover of musical theatre, but am far more familiar with the likes of The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, Wicked, and Hamilton. All that I knew about Cats was that it was a musical about cats with funny names, unique costumes, and a famous song called “Memory”, which Barbra Streisand did a cover of at some point. I never saw Cats on the stage, so I had little to compare it to. Going in blind, I found that the film version had great strengths in the talents it recruited, but really suffered from flaws in its unique visual style.

The film was a sung-through musical with very few spoken lines, and a huge emphasis on dance routines. The Jellicle cats of London, played by a bevvy of famous actors, singers, and professional dancers, communicated almost entirely through song and dance, presenting an entertaining blend of classical dance styles like ballet, jazz, and tap, as well as more modern dance styles like hip-hop and break-dancing. For anyone who loves watching dance choreography, Cats would certainly be enjoyable. I personally enjoyed the haunting new addition to the film’s soundtrack, written by Taylor Swift and Cats creator Andrew Lloyd Webber, called “Beautiful Ghosts”. The song, which was sung by the new kitten Victoria, had a partly melancholy, partly hopeful tone that felt at home in amongst the rest of the older songs, incidentally reflecting how the young outsider Victoria would find her home amongst the older, more experienced cats of the Jellicle tribe.

The cast of the film was certainly star-studded, with big names including Judi Dench, James Corden, Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, and Ian McKellen making appearances as Jellicle cats. While other all-star cast movies have previously struggled under the weight of too many famous faces at once, Cats didn’t feel over-crowded, and allowed everyone time to shine. In particular, I rather enjoyed the audition of Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, and was charmed by the Jellicles’ loving song of support and encouragement for Mr Mistoffelees. That said, I was disappointed by Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots the Gumbie Cat. In spite of the passable vocal talent that she showed in the Pitch Perfect movies, her singing in Cats was especially lacklustre when compared to the other singers in the cast. Rebel’s scene early on in the film felt out of sync with the rest of the movie’s tone, and made me feel like she has been typecast into yet another comedic role that I didn’t find that funny.

While many cats had their moment in the spotlight, much of the attention was on newcomer Francesca Hayward, a gifted ballerina in her film debut as the protagonist kitten Victoria. Without a doubt though, the absolute standout performance of Cats was Jennifer Hudson, who played the cat Grizabella, a lonely and faded outcast who has lived long past her glamorous glory days. As an actress, Hudson perfectly captured her character’s pain at being repeatedly shunned by the other cats, and made us all feel her heartbreaking need for acceptance and a new life. As a singer, Hudson’s emotional rendition of the nostalgic and iconic song “Memory” was pure tear-jerking perfection. I’d even go so far as to say that it was equal to her Oscar-winning performance of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” in Dreamgirls. I still have goosebumps. I don’t personally know whether her performance is enough to totally redeem Cats, but it certainly made forgiving some of its smaller sins much easier.

The film’s biggest sin, which the whole Internet saw coming when the trailer was first released, was the special effects. The attempt to make the human actors into cats through a combination of motion capture, live-action, and “digital fur technology” was certainly unique, but also deeply unsettling. The cats, who looked more like fuzzy humans with tails and cat ears, sat squarely within the “uncanny valley” that people feel when seeing something that looks vaguely human, but not enough to convince us. The fact that some cats wore clothes and others didn’t also meant that some of the cat-humans looked more like completely nude humans, with only a fine layer of soft fur covering them. In particular, Idris Elba’s villainous feline Macavity had cat fur which perfectly matched his skin tone, making him look very naked, and not in the good way. The end result was compounded by the cast’s overly exaggerated attempts to mimic the actions and movements of cats, and some uncomfortably intense sexual energy from supporting actors like Robbie Fairchild as Munkustrap.

Having wrestled with it myself in the cinema, I can certainly understand people’s issues with the uncanny valley effect of the film’s cat-human characters. It took quite a while to adjust to it, which took my attention away from the songs, dances, and storyline. However, by the end, I left the cinema thinking of the film as a lovely gift with some very unfortunate wrapping on the outside. If we can get past the initial shock that our brains feel at seeing something we know isn’t quite right, there’s a beautiful story waiting for us on the other side. Much like Disney’s recent hyper-realistic remake of The Lion King, the visuals created by the latest experimental advances in film technology are a little unnerving, but are simply the mechanism through which treasured stories are being retold. Underneath the layer of impressive but slightly wrong CGI was a truly touching story that explored how two cats at opposite ends of the journey both found acceptance and new beginnings.

Cats will definitely split audiences into camps of “I loved it”, “I hated it”, and “I don’t know how to feel about it”. As you can probably tell, I’m still figuring out how I feel about it myself. I’d still recommend that you go see Cats when it comes out, so you can decide for yourselves just how this new imagining of the classic musical sits with you.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Cats will be released in Australian cinemas on Boxing Day 2019. Check the website of whichever cinema you prefer for session times and tickets.