Andrew Lloyd Webber hated the ‘Cats’ film so much – he had to buy a therapy dog to get over it.
The 73-year-old theatre mogul, who penned the original 1981 musical, has been vocal about his distaste for the widely-derided 2019 movie.
And he’s now branded the flick – which starred the likes of James Corden, Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Jason Derulo, and Dame Judi Dench – “off-the-scale all wrong” and revealed he went out and bought a Havanese puppy to help him deal with the shocking movie adaptation of his beloved Tony Award-winning stage show.
In an interview with Variety, he said: “‘Cats’ was off-the-scale all wrong.
“There wasn’t really any understanding of why the music ticked at all. I saw it and I just thought, ‘Oh, God, no.’ It was the first time in my 70-odd years on this planet that I went out and bought a dog. So the one good thing to come out of it is my little Havanese puppy.”
Webber quipped that he requested to have the pooch with him at work because he was so “emotionally damaged” after seeing the motion picture.
He said: “I wrote off and said I needed him with me at all times because I’m emotionally damaged and I must have this therapy dog.
“The airline wrote back and said, ‘Can you prove that you really need him?’ And I said ‘Yes, just see what Hollywood did to my musical ‘Cats’. Then the approval came back with a note saying, ‘No doctor’s report required.'”
Andrew Lloyd Webber previously hit out at the director for not consulting anyone who was “involved” with the stage show when creating the silver screen adaptation.
He fumed: “The problem with the film was that Tom Hooper decided, as he had with ‘Les Mis’, that he didn’t want anybody involved in it who was involved in the original show … The whole thing was ridiculous.”
And it wasn’t the first time Andrew had levelled criticism towards the movie as he previously took a swipe at Corden’s “unfunny” depiction of Bustopher Jones in the film.
During a YouTube live commentary of a 1998 film version of the stage show, Andrew said: “Bustopher without interruption, as I wrote it. Do not be beguiled by other versions.
“Other versions with unfunny interpolations which I begged to be cut out. I did manage to get the worst of them removed. I cannot tell you how absolutely un-Eliot it all was in this song… He certainly didn’t hang around on a seesaw.”
He did not mention Corden by name but hinted that he was referring to the ‘Gavin and Stacey’ star.
