Review: Cats Sense Doesn’t Make Any I Recover Never May Not

To get it out the way: Cats is the worst film of 2019. The bizarre musical-turned-movie is a lucid fever dream from start to head-scratching finish, but what’s most striking — among many striking things — is the breakneck pace of a movie without a plot. The story, for those generous enough to grant it the label, follows the lives of a clan of stray cats who are meant to choose a sort-of Chosen One, a special cat to be honored. The journey to choosing that cat includes an evil cat named Macavity (Idris Elba), a queen-like cat named Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), and a world of dozens of other cats, many of whom make one-scene cameos for songs ranging from self-deprecating fat-joke feline James Corben to furry thirst trap Taylor Swift.

The world of Cats is discovered through the eyes of Victoria (Francesca Hayward) as a new stray who is seeing the world for the first time. What doesn’t make sense — granted, none of this makes sense — is Victoria’s wide-eyed newness the lives and culture of her entire species given that other cats like Jennyanydots (played by a cringingly terrible Rebel Wilson performance) are indoor cats who aren’t seeing the world for the first time. Victoria is the only cat so bewildered, precisely to explain to the audience a world that actually doesn’t need much explanation. What does need explanation is how such a remarkably bad concept and script made through greenlighting, production, and editing with a cast of A-list stars who seem to forfeit a bit …