Cats

It's been on my DVR for ages, and after multiple aborted attempts I finally completed watching Cats yesterday evening (and even yesterday it was my second attempt as the first time I fell asleep after only 10 minutes).  Let me just add some context by saying that I have not seen the stage version of Cats, which by all accounts was a long-running and successful production.  And apparently this film is quite a faithful adaptation of the stage version.  But what works on stage does not work on the big (or small) screen.  This film is awful.  Like REALLY awful.  Easily one of the worst films I've ever seen.  Everything from the plot, the special effects, the choreography, the music (apart from one notable exception which I'll mention below), the performances, the production values, it was all bad.  Glaringly bad.  It starts with the actual cats and the decision to make them look like these CGI-heavy emotionless sexless human-cat hybrid monstrosities.  They alone will give me nightmares for years to come.  I'm not going to linger on the nonsensical plot - something about a showcase for choosing one cat to go to heaven or something, I'm still not entirely sure (and what the f does "Jellicle" actually mean?).  But basically it's an excuse to introduce (and then promptly discard) one cat after another to the audience.  And the caliber of actors portraying these cats is high, all of whom should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for appearing in this debacle (we're talking classical actors like Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellan, acclaimed actors like Idris Elba and Ray Winstone, successful musicians like Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson, comedic actors like James Corden and Rebel Wilson [though I don't like either of them, so perhaps they are perfect for this trash], and a bunch of other nobodies who should probably just stick to panto).  And it just all felt so strange on the screen - the choreography was off-putting, the sets were basic and built (or CGI'ed) to some weird scale, a lot of the lyrics and dialogue were noticeably repetitive and simplistic (and most of it was sung, which sometimes made it very difficult to understand what they were saying so I actually watched the film with subtitles).  So, all in all, an absolute disaster that should never have seen the light of day.  I'm giving it 1 star out of 5 - and that 1 star is exclusively due to the song Memory, which is unarguably a great song and the performance of which really stands out as the sole highlight of the film.  Not good.