Judi Dench admits she hasn’t seen the final cut of 2019’s film Cats, but has some words to say about the movie in her new memoir. At the moment, we’re in an era where the royalty of Hollywood are rallying around the Tom Cruise-headlined box office disappointment, Digger. The argument: if you’re going to dunk ... Cats | Judi Dench reflects on the 2019 masterpiece
Judi Dench admits she hasn’t seen the final cut of 2019’s film Cats, but has some words to say about the movie in her new memoir.
At the moment, we’re in an era where the royalty of Hollywood are rallying around the Tom Cruise-headlined box office disappointment, Digger. The argument: if you’re going to dunk on someone for taking a swing, then all you’re going to get are the same old same old movies.
Where were those people in 2019 though, eh?
That was when the big screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats musical hit the big screen, a treat for Christmas moviegoers. But chums, you don’t need me to tell you that people weren’t kind to the movie, which I maintain is a bizarrely entertaining, never dull, never actually good piece of cinema. I didn’t notice Tom Cruise taking a bullet for it, so he can’t be surprised if the cast of Cats don’t turn out for him.
Anyway, one of the stars of the film, Dame Judi Dench, is just about to release her memoir, and early extracts from it have leaked out. In it, she discussed the movie, and confesses, well, she’s never actually seen the final cut of it. Instead, she notes that the film turned out to be something that wasted “goodwill and talent.”
Just because she didn’t see the film, it didn’t mean she didn’t know what was going on.
“I understand the critics were rather hostile to the film. I never saw the final cut, so I can’t judge. All I’ll say is nobody sets out to give a poor performance or make a bad film. You do your best, offer something up and hope that people will get on board and join the party.”
She further confessed in the book that she never felt entirely at ease about her role in the film, and whether she actually fitted it properly. But fair play to her: she’s come out and defended her fellow castmates. And in return for that, she deserves her own gold-plated Blu-ray copy of the film.
Dench’s book is available here.
