From James Corden’s furball to Taylor Swift’s British accent, which cat from Cats is the most embarrassing?

Both the bravest studio movie in recent memory and fur-lined nightmare fuel, Cats will inevitably be the talk of all of your Christmas parties this year. But more importantly, which of the film’s oddball cast has the least to feel ashamed about? Adam White has ranked them all, from the least to the most embarrassing

(Universal Pictures )

In my final moments, with death’s icy grip slowly enveloping me, all I will see in the darkening abyss is the image of James Corden coughing up a furball into Ray Winstone’s face. Cats is that kind of movie – a circus of the grotesque and unholy, it is unlike anything you will have seen, and genuinely the bravest, strangest studio film in years.

Calling it a disaster would be unfair. Cats: The Movie’s problems are Cats: The Musical’s problems. There are songs that rarely rise anywhere above “passable”, the sheer weirdness of its costumes, and its baffling plot structure – one largely comprised of various cats introducing themselves ahead of a flat finale involving a cat in rags floating up into the sky.

The film is also a must-see, primarily because something as bizarre and horrifying as Cats will never, ever be made again. Other than director Tom Hooper, who else would be brave enough to ask Rebel Wilson to unzip her own fur, revealing a pink waistcoat that conceals her actual cat-flesh?

What other film would make Jason Derulo’s apparently enormous appendage a significant element of its press tour? And on what other occasion would you find yourself sincerely attempting to figure out whether Dame Judi Dench has incredibly hairy shoulders or whether she’s just wearing a big coat?

Most significantly, you are left with one lingering question as the Cats credits roll: which member of its endearingly nightmarish cast embarrassed themselves the least? To help out, here’s our handy guide to which stars emerge from the film with their dignity less scratched at.

Judi Dench

Dench is assisted by the fact that she is the star of the film’s strongest scene – an energetic, well-shot melding of song and dance, as the cats are seemingly transfixed by a full moon. But Dench also nails a quiet sense of magic and wonderment, her voice compassionate, maternal and appropriately croaky. As Old Deuteronomy, a grand “wise cat” formerly played by Brian Blessed on the stage, she is by far and away the most convincing and entertaining part of Cats, delivering theatrical nuances that elude the rest of the cast. She still looks entirely deranged, it should be said, but that’s by-the-by.

Embarrassment factor: 2/10

Idris Elba

Of all the Cats cast, Elba is the actor seemingly having the most fun. He snarls, he cackles, he hisses at James Corden. He also appears fully aware of its derangement, and the baffling, barely understandable evil scheme of his villain Macavity, and runs with it all. Although there’s an odd attempt here to make him somewhat sexy – his cat-body is disturbingly ripped and toned – Elba is otherwise one of the movie’s rare pleasures.

Embarrassment factor: 2/10

Jason Derulo

Derulo’s penis-themed public profile of late has eclipsed a scary truth: he’s one of the best things in Cats. His British accent is fine, he has just the right amount of frantic exuberance, and his big solo number (a jangle of funk and jazz titled after himself, The Rum Tum Tugger) is pleasing to the eyes if not necessarily the ears. Derulo could be Cats’ breakout star, which few could have predicted when the film’s cast were first announced.

Embarrassment factor: 3/10

Frantic exuberance: Jason Derulo in Cats (Universal Pictures)

Ian McKellen

In a film almost entirely comprised of scenes that could have been cut out without much incident, Ian McKellen’s musical number is its most superfluous. As the “old famous-actor cat” Gus, McKellen is reliably crotchety and cantankerous, if lacking in much warmth for a character we’re meant to feel something for.

Embarrassment factor: 3/10

Francesca Hayward

If it weren’t for the introduction of solo number “Beautiful Ghosts”, a new track composed for the film by Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Hayward would be a mere bystander throughout Cats – dumped in an alley in the film’s opening scene, and then left to stare in awe at the various cats she is introduced to over the course of the movie. Hayward, a principal ballerina in her first acting role, is perfectly fine here, but she is very much Cats’ version of Les Miserables’ Samantha Barks – decent; likely never to be seen in movies again; probably the star of a Broadway show in 2022.

Embarrassment factor: 3/10

A peculiar British inflection: Taylor Swift in Cats (Universal Pictures)

Taylor Swift

To the disappointment of her legions of fans, Taylor Swift is only given one line of spoken dialogue (“He’s not got a soul!” she says in her best Kat Slater drawl) and a single song, sung in a peculiar British inflection. She’s “sexy henchwoman cat” Bombalurina, who arrives on a giant crescent moon to… gas (?) our heroes, before breaking into song. Swift doesn’t do much more here than in the videos for her Reputation album, which is to say: there is lots of posing, pouting and pointing – like Victoria Beckham if she were a furry. But it’s such a creepily sexualised sight, considering she’s a literal cat, that she should probably hang her head in shame anyway.

Embarrassment factor: 6/10

James Corden

Corden’s character and Wilson’s character are introduced one after another at the start of Cats, enabling a long stretch of screen time devoted almost entirely to fat jokes. Like Wilson, Corden is doing something here that doesn’t entirely work – his “society cat” Bustopher Jones is a preening, flamboyant caricature that appears coded as gay (it’s gone in a flash, but he appears to be romantically nuzzling another male cat at the film’s climax). He also ingests whole prawns in single gulps and sports an enormous fake belly, like Austin Powers’ Fat Bastard if he were in a David Cronenberg movie.

Embarrassment factor: 9/10

Rebel Wilson

There’s a lot of sexual imagery in Cats, made even weirder by the fact that the cast have no genitalia and, rather than kiss, merely nuzzle each other’s faces. But nothing is as uncomfortable as watching Rebel Wilson’s terrifyingly erotic performance as “lazy tabby cat” Jennyanydots. In between wolfing down cockroaches (played by actual children, only to enhance the Lynchian-nightmare qualities), Wilson bends and stretches and strokes her tail as if it’s a phallic implement. She plays her role like a literal cat in heat, and it’s ghastly.

Embarrassment factor: 9/10

Ray Winstone

Conveniently absent from the film’s posters, potentially at his own request, Winstone’s appearance is one of the biggest surprises in Cats. He is Growltiger, a “dodgy geezer” cat who lives on a barge and holds various cast members hostage. And in a film full of actors being a tad too enthusiastic, Winstone is the guiltiest party, hissing and mewing and wildly gesticulating, as if he’s never heard of the term “too much”.

Embarrassment factor: 9/10

Jennifer Hudson

Jennifer Hudson’s big Cats moment plays like the evil twin of Viola Davis’s single scene in Doubt, or Anne Hathaway’s very loud death walk in Les Miserables. Squint and you can just about see her awards-season consultant reflected in the snot running down her nose, Hudson exaggeratingly quivering her lips and telegraphing her character’s inner turmoil with the subtlety of a stampeding elephant.

Playing Grizabella, the tragic “forgotten cat” responsible for the famous Cats number “Memory”, Hudson ought to be the film’s most heartbreaking component. But she is so overwrought here, crawling along the floor like a drama school student long having given up, that it produces more giggles than tears. Which is odd, considering she won an Oscar for a remarkably similar scene of musical defiance in Dreamgirls more than a decade ago. Cats, on the other hand, does her dirty.

Embarrassment factor: 10/10