Judi Dench has delivered a fresh blow to Cats, writing in her forthcoming memoir that the 2019 film was “a waste of all that goodwill and talent.” Dench, who played Old Deuteronomy in the Andrew Lloyd Webber adaptation, says the people making it meant well, but the result still missed badly.
That remark is the reason her Judi Dench Cats Movie Comments are drawing attention now. The memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, adds a new first-person criticism from one of the film’s best-known cast members after years of ridicule over the adaptation, its erratic CGI and the strange details that have been replayed ever since release.
Dench had already made clear she was not eager to relive the experience. In an interview the year after Cats came out, she said she had so far declined to watch the movie, adding that she had never seen the final cut and could not judge it. She also said nobody sets out to give a poor performance or make a bad film, and that sometimes things simply do not work out because the timing is wrong, the cast do not gel and the elements do not coalesce.
Even so, she did not soften the point entirely. Dench wrote that people’s intentions are mostly honourable, but she also said, “What a waste of all that goodwill and talent.” She had earlier joked about the orange fur coat she had to wear, describing it as looking like “five foxes fucking on my back,” a line that captured how odd the production looked from the inside as much as from the outside.
The film, directed by Tom Hooper, was the 2019 adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and was widely panned on release. Among the most mocked details was the film’s erratic CGI, along with the decision to erase every animal’s anus while, in Dench’s case, keeping a human hand complete with wedding ring. The reaction was so severe that the movie has remained shorthand for a high-profile misfire.
Dench’s memoir does not add new accusations, but it does sharpen the sense of regret around a project that never recovered from the reaction to it. The unanswered question is not whether Cats failed; it is how a production with this much talent and intention ended up looking, in Dench’s own words, like such a waste.
Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? is still forthcoming, which means more reflection from Dench may yet emerge. For now, her latest comments confirm that one of the film’s own stars sees Cats not as a guilty pleasure, but as an expensive misfire that never found its footing.
