According to Variety, Judi Dench wrote in her forthcoming memoir "Is It Too Late to Make a Run For It?" that Tom Hooper's 2019 "Cats" film was "a waste of all that goodwill and talent," adding, "I never saw the final cut so I can't judge." The actor, who played Old Deuteronomy, was nominated for a Razzie for the role. The memoir hits shelves Nov. 3.
Dench called the movie a waste and, in the same breath, said she never watched it. That is a memoir excerpt doing the job of a press release: a verdict without the viewing, delivered on the exact schedule of a book launch.
The mechanism is a Razzie nominee leaving a bad Yelp review for a meal she never tasted. "Goodwill" was the word she picked, and the goodwill in question belongs to the composer, who in Dench's words "had waited so long" for the film to happen. He also co-produced it. No villains, no mistakes, just goodwill.
She insists "there were no villains in the making of Cats," which is the line an Oscar winner uses when a Razzie nomination is in the paperwork. There were no villains. There was a lion costume, a pop star on a salary, a director who had never made a musical, and a composer who waited so long he stopped checking the calendar.
The memoir is due Nov. 3. By then the film will be seven years old, the Razzie old news, and the lion costume in storage. All that will be left is a woman saying she can't judge, while judging, in a book that hits shelves at the exact moment the film becomes a safe topic.
YOUR TURN: Does a review from someone who never saw the film count as a review, and does it matter that the book lands in three weeks?
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