Judi Dench calls Cats film a waste of goodwill and talent

Judi Dench has dismissed the 2019 film adaptation of Cats as "a waste of all that goodwill and talent" in her forthcoming memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?. Dench played Old Deuteronomy in the digitally reworked version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, a production that put her in an orange fur coat she had already described, the year after release, as looking like "five foxes fucking on my back".

The film was universally panned, and its erratic CGI came in for the most energetic criticism of all: the effects work erased every cat's anus while retaining, in Dench's case, a human hand complete with wedding ring. A photograph of the hand circulated on Twitter. Dench, who had already declined to watch the film once when asked, confirms in the memoir that she still has not. "I understand the critics were rather hostile to the film," she writes. "I never saw the final cut so I can't judge."

What judgment she offers is gentle by the standards of the reception. "There were no villains in the making of Cats," she writes. "Sometimes things just don't work out: the timing's wrong, the cast don't gel, the elements don't coalesce. But people's intentions are mostly honourable." Nobody sets out to give a poor performance or make a bad film, she allows; you do your best, offer something up and hope people get on board and join the party. Tom Hooper, who directed, has not made a film since.

Lloyd Webber, whom Dench notes "had waited so long for it to be made", has been less forgiving. He has called the film "off-the-scale all wrong" and ridiculous, saying Hooper consulted none of those involved in the original West End production and showed no understanding of "why the music ticked at all". The experience left him so "emotionally damaged" that he bought a Havanese puppy — the first dog, he says, he had gone out and bought in 70-odd years on the planet.

Travelling with the dog required proving to an airline that it was a necessary emotional support animal. Lloyd Webber's entire submission consisted of one sentence: "Just see what Hollywood did to my musical Cats." The approval came back with a note saying no doctor's report was required.