Cats Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs

2. The Totally Wasted Supporting Cast

Cats undeniably has one of the most stacked casts of any movie released this year, and though the frontline performers do their level-best to elevate the material, numerous wonderful supporting players are completely wasted.

Most prominently squandered is Idris Elba, who appears intermittently as the villainous Macavity.

Though his eponymous musical number opposite Bombalurina (Taylor Swift) is as scarcely good as the movie ever gets, for the most part he's just left standing around looking ridiculous.

Ian McKellen also doesn't do a whole lot memorable beyond lap milk out of a saucer (really), and though Judi Dench is exceptionally well-cast as Old Deuteronomy, aside from a brief closing number in which she tears down the fourth wall she's given depressingly little of interest to do.