The Cats Movie Reviews Are In, And Oh My It Sounds Like A CGI Nightmare

Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper's new movie, Cats, is out in theatres this weekend. Reviews have begun to appear online ahead of the premiere, and the movie sounds like an unsettling CGI nightmare.

The film--which features unsettling CGI-cat versions of actors like Ian McKellan, James Corden, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, and Taylor Swift--currently has a 31 percent rating on GameSpot sister site Metacritic. We've collected some quick-hit highlights of the movie's critical reception below.

Cats is based on the iconic Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical of the same name. It's Hooper's second musical movie, following 2012's Les Miserables. It also stars Jason Derulo, Jennifer Hudson, Rebel Wilson, and Francesca Hayward. It hits theatres on December 20, which is the same day that the divisive Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits screens.

What The Reviewers Are Saying About Cats

i09's Cats movie review went with the headline, "I Have Seen Sights No Human Should See." Reviewer Alex Cranz elaborated, "You will witness things no eyes should see and things nobody should be able to do, and you will be in awe. And that's more than enough."

The Chicago Tribune used the headline, "Wrong Animal. It's A Dog" for their Cats review. "Is it the worst film of 2019, or simply the most recent misfire of 2019?" reviewer Michael Phillips said. "Reader, I swear on a stack of pancakes: Cats cannot be beat for sheer folly and misjudgment and audience-reaction-to-Springtime for Hitler'-in-The Producers stupefaction."

Lena Wilson of The Playlist said of Cats, "Tom Hooper’s Adaptation Of A Broadway Classic Is A CGI Nightmare."

"Once Hooper’s 110 minutes of Cats are over, theater is dead," Wilson said. "One lucky Jellicle cat is dead. And we unchosen ones are left, tragically, to continue living."

The Los Angeles Times writer Justin Chang wrote: "For the most part, Cats is both a horror and an endurance test, a dispatch from some neon-drenched netherworld where the ghastly is inextricable from the tedious. Every so often it does paws--ahem, pause--to rise to the level of a self-aware hoot."

USA Today's Brian Truitt described the movie in this way: "A furry Taylor Swift sprinkles the contents of a bedazzled can of catnip to create a fog of intoxicating magical dust, and that's not even in the top five truly insane things that happen in Cats."

Collider's review of Cats said, "You can never get swept up in Catsbecause it’s so abrasively weird and anti-narrative that you needed some kind of fearless auteur like a Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin) who would lean into those sensibilities rather than flail desperately at making it palatable for audiences."

For more on the critical reaction to Cats, go to Metacritic.