The success of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof more probably rests on the straight-forward grounds that it is a strong, well-acted drama and more especially that its theme... has a tragic pertinence for many contemporary audiences.

| Aug 24, 2023

Brimming with Southern personality, big but fitting performances, and a script with a bite, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is as mesmerizing today as it was over 50 years ago.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

Tennessee Williams's overheated tale of familial strife in the Deep South comes alive in this atmospheric dramatisation - it's all steamy, fly-blown and shutters slammin'.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 9, 2020

Although the scope is small and the personas largely disagreeable, the performances are outstanding.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 15, 2020

Superbly acted, and following the Kazan-inspired happy ending third act written as a rather reluctant postscript, rather than the original original, it is a photographed stage play and we remain outside, in the audience.

| Jul 20, 2018

Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, both gorgeous beyond measure, strike sparks as the sexually unfulfilled Maggie and her tortured husband Brick, while Burl Ives is sensational as the family patriarch Big Daddy.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 17, 2016

...like watching a melodrama in a sauna. It's just too much.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 27, 2011

Classics-loving teens will appreciate family melodrama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 22, 2010

A formaldehyded tabby that sits static while layer after layer of its skin is peeled off, life after life of its nine lives unsentimentally destroyed.

| Oct 1, 2008

The performances are the thing in this film version of the Tennessee Williams stage triumph, led by Ives, repeating his stage role like a force of nature.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 8, 2008

An intense, important motion picture.

| Apr 8, 2008

Director Brooks skilfully elicits the best from his performers and script with the result that there were Oscars nominations for all concerned.

| Apr 8, 2008

Burl Ives and Judith Anderson are highly entertaining as the nightmare parents, Big Daddy and Big Mama, and Jack Carson has one of his last good roles as Newman's competitive older brother.

| Apr 8, 2008

Richard Brooks' screen version of Tennessee Williams' play is compromised (no mention of homosexuality), but it's well directed and deftly acted by Paul Newman and Liz Taylor, both at their sexiest.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 7, 2008

A mousetrap with teeth that grip and a musky atmosphere of frustrated sex and milky desperation that serves as poisoned bait.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 26, 2006

As so often with adaptations of Williams, it frequently errs on the side of overstatement and pretension, but still remains immensely enjoyable as a piece of cod-Freudian codswallop.

| Jun 24, 2006

...the dialogue is so absorbing and the acting so intense, we hardly notice that 108 minutes go by or that there is a whole lot less to the plot than meets the eye.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 1, 2006

Still, this potentially over-scrubbed production kept enough of Williams' energy and poetic Americana intact, fleshing it up with an ensemble of career-imprinting performances and MGM production lavishness.

| Apr 30, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 10, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2005