Why is 'Cats' such a disaster? Blame the concept-musical curse

"Cats" tells the story of a group of cats as they gather for a competition: Who among them most deserves to be reborn. Each feline performs a number to introduce themselves and deliver their best pitch for the prize.

OK, I admit that the phrase "tells the story" is somewhat generous for such a thin premise. Narratively speaking, the nearly-two-hour movie-musical - which opened this past weekend to scathing reviews and a dismal $6.6 million at the box office - covers the same ground as a season-premiere episode of a reality competitions like "The Bachelor" or "Dancing With the Stars."

"If you see this movie - and I offer that up as a hypothetical, not a recommendation - and arrive at the theater not excessively inebriated, you will indeed learn about several different kinds of cat, with stripe and spot formations as impressively varied as their personality types and domestication levels," wrote Times film critic Justin Chang. "There are certainly worse characters one could spend time with, though I am hard-pressed at the moment to think of many worse movies."

The near universal