Cats Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs

Downs...

7. The HORRIFYING Visual Effects

Cats is unquestionably the ugliest $95 million tentpole movie in recent memory, and it largely comes down to director Tom Hooper's decision to slather the production in as much CGI as possible.

The biggest problem, clearly, was the choice to have the actors appear as cats through performance capture, with their recognisable faces being awkwardly grafted onto digital, humanoid cat models.

This immediately causes the film to fall deep into the uncanny valley, with the result often looking more like a naff phone app filter than a gargantuan Hollywood production.

It frequently appears as though the actors' faces are barely clinging to their cat models, embarrassingly.

Even the floors are green-screened in most scenes, causing the cats to often appear as though they're floating an inch or so off the ground, and there are occasional instances where the performers' hands or feet disappear through the floor.

That's to say nothing of the film's horrendous CGI mice and cockroaches which appear during Jennyanydots' (Rebel Wilson) musical number.

It all adds up to a movie that looks shockingly shoddy considering the price tag. Clearly, it was totally wrong-headed design-wise from the outset.

Cats is nothing short of hideous, and it actively distracts from one's ability to just sit back and enjoy the musical numbers.