Judi Dench, Andrew Lloyd Webber Slam Cats Film Disaster — SkimNews
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- Judi Dench reflects on her role in the 2019 Cats film, calling it 'a waste of goodwill and talent' and saying she cannot bear to watch the final cut.
- Judi Dench described her character's fur coat as looking like 'five foxes fucking on my back' and noted the film’s flawed CGI, which left her with a human hand visible in cat form.
- Andrew Lloyd Webber criticized the Cats film as 'off-the-scale all wrong' and said he was 'emotionally damaged' by the experience, leading him to buy a Havanese puppy.
- Andrew Lloyd Webber claimed the film lacked understanding of the original musical's essence and said he had to cite Hollywood's treatment of Cats to get airline approval for his dog as an emotional support animal.
- Tom Hooper has not directed a film since Cats, which was universally panned and widely mocked for its CGI and artistic choices.
Why it matters: The backlash to *Cats* was so severe it derailed the careers of major figures involved—Hooper hasn’t worked since, Dench disowns the film, and Lloyd Webber needed emotional support to recover—turning a high-profile adaptation into a cautionary tale about creative misalignment and technical overreach in blockbuster filmmaking.
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