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Metascore
51 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 58Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattEntertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattEven after 110 tumbling, tail-swishing, deeply psychedelic minutes, it’s hard to know if you ever really knew anything — except that C is for Cats, C is for Crazy, and C is probably the grade this cinematic lunacy deserves, in the sense of making any sense at all. And yet that somewhere under the Jellicle moonlight, it is somehow, too, an A++.
- 50SlashfilmHoai-Tran BuiSlashfilmHoai-Tran BuiIts premise is ridiculous, its entire appeal based on the novelty of having a bunch of Lycra-clad strangers thrust their hips at you in the dark. Hooper creates something just as bizarre with his Cats, though not as successfully electrifying. Its flashes of brilliance feel like happy accidents and its uncanny technical choices are never overcome.
- 40EmpireEmpireDestined to be an instant guilty pleasure, Cats is an insane musical experiment gone wrong. It is truly like nothing cinema has ever seen. The question is, is it something cinema actually wanted?
- 33ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerAs an adaptation, Cats is declawed, never delving fully into the possibilities offered by its proportion-manipulating trick photography and its animated cast. As a big-budget spectacle, it’s a triumphant disaster, if one at least born from a unique idea.
- 30TheWrapRobert AbeleTheWrapRobert AbeleTom Hooper’s jarring fever dream of a spectacle is like something that escaped from Dr. Moreau’s creature laboratory instead of a poet’s and a composer’s feline (uni)verse, an un-catty valley hybrid of physical and digital that unsettles and crashes way more often than it enchants.
- 30The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyIt's almost unfathomable that this one made it through all the preliminary production meetings without someone sensibly calling a halt to the process by saying, "Wait a minute, those kitties are damn creepy!"
- Here’s the thing, though: Cats still makes no f.cking sense.
- 20The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawIt’s warbling warbling warbling piffle.
- 12Slant MagazineJake ColeSlant MagazineJake ColeThis adaptation gets straight to the heart of the material, which is basically two hours of stray cats introducing themselves.