TS Eliot would probably have enjoyed the film adaptation of Cats despite the critical mauling it has received from reviewers around the world, according to the administrator of the poet’s estate, the Guardian has reported.

The Guardian’s own critic, Peter Bradshaw, gave it a one-star out of five rating, and wrote his review entirely in verse, in an attempted parody of Eliot. His review, titled “A purr-fectly dreadful hairball of woe”, begins: “The filming of Cats is a difficult matter, / It isn’t just one of your holiday games, / Each actor involved here looks mad as a hatter, / When the trailer came out, we were CALLING THEM NAMES.”

Tom Hooper’s adaption of the long-running musical is based on Eliot’s book of children’s poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Clare Reihill, who administers the poet’s estate – which was not involved with the adaptation – said she believed the poet would have loved it.

“I don’t have to praise it, I could stay quiet and say nothing if I had doubts about it. But I genuinely love the oddness of it,” she said. “Everything has come from such a place of warmth. Eliot had written the poems for his godchildren, then Andrew Lloyd Webber had fallen in love with the book when he was a child, then Tom Hooper fell in love with the show when he was eight. Everything comes from such a sincere place. It’s quite unique to put that sort of budget against something that’s idiosyncratic. I think that should be celebrated because everything [nowadays] is franchises or sequels or formulaic, and here we have something so crazy.”

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical light poems by TS Eliot about feline psychology and sociology. Eliot wrote the poems in the 1930s, and included them, under his assumed name "Old Possum", in letters to his godchildren. They were collected and published in 1939.

Reihill said: “We know he would have liked the lines because he wrote them. Then, he loved dance … his nickname at Harvard was Elbows Eliot, he loved dance so much. He also used to go to musical theatre all the time with [his wife] Valerie. So I can’t see how he wouldn’t have liked it, with all those things he loved being in one film. I think he would have had a sense of humour about it, he was very open-minded, he liked having his head blown. He was an unusual person and this is such an unusual thing.”

Reihill said that “there’s always been so much derision about the musical and that’s carried over to the film” and that “seeing Judi Dench’s face covered in fur is going to startle you, of course”.

But she said that Eliot’s widow Valerie “loved the musical and she knew him so well … If you take all those things he loved, they’re all in the film, and I like to imagine him sitting in the cinema with a smile on his face,” she said. “Maybe the audience will judge and it’ll be a lovely warm-hearted response.”

Maybe. Peter Bradshaw’s parodic review ends with these words:

 

     Ray Winstone’s the creepiest cat in this feature

     His Growltiger sends a sharp chill down your spine

     With his hissing he looks like he’s having a seizure,

     It’s scary – like adverts for betting online.

     When you notice these cats in profound meditation

     With a digitally created frown on their brow

     Their minds are engaged in a rapt contemplation

     Of the thought, of the thought, of what on earth to do now.

     “Pretend to be cats!” says a director. They reply …

     “Me? How?”

 

PHOTOGRAPH: UNIVERSAL PICTURES