Cats

With the head-scratcher going by the name of Cats, Tom Hooper continues (completes?) his decade-long fall from greatness after winning the Best Director Oscar for The King’s Speech.

Visually repulsive and not far behind on a sonic level, the adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is a stunning all-around failure — a doomed, laughable undertaking whose partial saving grace is the unwitting yet sadly inevitable fulfillment of its joke-prophecy existence as teased in Six Degrees of Separation.

Abrasive from the start, the film follows abandoned feline Victoria (ballet star Francesca Hayward) as she’s introduced to the world of the London cats known as Jellicles, conveniently arriving on the annual night when their leader Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench, doing the best she can) selects one deserving kitty to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and return to a new Jellicle life.

What follows is essentially a complex audition process in which Victoria meets the likes of pampered Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), overdoing it on the slapstick and cat puns; obese-and-loving-it Bustopher Jones (James Corden); and magical Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson, TNT’s Will) — though it’s unclear until later who’s in contention and who’s not.

While they sing T.S. Eliot’s poetry to the tune of Lloyd Webber’s music — how this awkward pairing produced a hit remains a mystery — the evil Macavity (Idris Elba) lurks in the shadows, tempting the candidates with their weaknesses, then teleporting them away to a boat/prison on the Thames like a dollar-store version of X-Men’s Nightcrawler.

Narrative and musical issues aside, Cats’ most troublesome element is its repugnant humanoid/feline character design. Looking like naked furry bipeds, the animals’ odd mix of digital effects and practical costuming never meshes and is bound to inspire its share of nightmares. Hooper’s reliance on CGI also negates much of the talented choreographers’ and dancers’ efforts and makes one feel bad for the animators who toiled away on the characters’ ears.

Amongst this messy litter box of a movie, Ian McKellen’s turn as Gus the theater cat is the lone non-creepy role. Wearing clothes helps his cause, as does playing a disheveled old actor, complete with charming backstage superstitions and licking up whatever liquid he can find.

But this welcome escape aside, Cats is a disaster. Even its big emotional moment and lone melodic number, “Memory,” is overacted by Jennifer Hudson’s outcast Grizabella to the point of incomprehension, leaving little to recommend other than the opportunity to watch a cinematic dumpster fire.

Grade: D-minus. Rated PG. Now playing at AMC Classic, Biltmore Grande, and Carolina Cinemark

(Photo: Universal Pictures)