Cats (2019)

Tom Hooper's Cats arrives as a $95 million act of faith in the proposition that digital fur and Andrew Lloyd Webber can sustain a narrative in which almost nothing happens for 110 minutes. The plot concerns a tribe of Jellicles selecting one of their number for ascension to the Heaviside Layer, a premise that generates a sequence of auditions and very little else. The visual effects, finished hours before the premiere, render the cast as humanoid cats of unsettling proportion. The removal of certain anatomical details required a dedicated crew member. This is the cinema of our age.

The ensemble is more diverse than the stage tradition demands. Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo, and the mixed-race ballet dancer Francesca Hayward in the lead role give the Jellicle tribe a complexion the material never acknowledges. Hayward's Victoria serves as our guide, and Judi Dench's Old Deuteronomy was rewritten from a male part to accommodate her, a gesture toward matriarchy the film accepts without argument. Bustopher Jones, played by James Corden beneath a great deal of padding, sings in praise of his own appetite and girth. It plays as a joke about a fat cat, not a thesis on self-acceptance.

What the film lacks is any instruction. No character explains our obligations to the climate, the working class, or the historical record. Macavity is a criminal because the plot requires a villain, not because he stands for greed. Grizabella is exiled and redeemed through the sympathy of a newcomer, and the lesson is simply that kindness costs nothing, a sentiment older than the twentieth century. The cats dance, ascend, and disperse. There is no sermon, no moral, no moment where the film turns to face us and tells us how to live. In a theatrical landscape saturated with messaging, this is either a relief or a waste of a very expensive chandelier. Both readings are defensible.