“CATS”

** 1/2

(PG, 1:50)

There’s apparently enough groundbreaking technology used in “Cats” for NASA to send a rocket into space. But let’s forget the “digi­tal fur technology” used to turn stars like Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift and Idris Elba into fabulous felines. It’s not the technology that makes a whisker of difference here.

No, it’s an old-school quality that’s the real “special effect” worth talking about in “Cats,” the new film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber juggernaut: veteran stage talent, such as Judi Dench, who can take any silliness and make it genuine and moving; her old friend Ian McKellen, who can embody an aging cat as well as he can Gandalf or Macbeth; and James Corden, a Tony-winning stage actor especially good at slapstick.

Give director Tom Hooper credit for assembling a cast that knows its way around a stage. This estimable group includes singing stars like Hudson and Swift, who each get a blockbuster number; and movie stars like Elba and Rebel Wilson, a “Gumbie cat” who should be called a “Raunchy cat.”

And dance stars. Choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler brings in top talents like Robbie Fairchild, the former New York City Ballet principal dancer, and Francesca Hayward, a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, as the ingenue Victoria.

All this for a show with no real narrative arc, based on poems adapted by Webber from Eliot’s 1939 “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Here the action is set in 1930s London.

It is Victoria (Hayward) who begins our story. The innocent young newcomer is unceremoniously dumped by her owner in an alleyway. Suddenly she is surrounded by cats — the Jellicle cats, who have come together for the annual Jellicle Ball.

The ball marks the night when one lucky cat is chosen to rise skyward to the “Heaviside Layer,” and be reborn. The choice lies with Old Deuteronomy, here played by Dench, who lends the proceedings needed heft and authenticity.

If Dench embodies good, Elba’s character, the green-eyed Macavity, embodies evil. He’s desperate to win the ball’s prize.

But before the ball, each cat sings what amounts to a personal audition song — sort of “A Chorus Line” for ambitious felines. They include Jennyanydots, played by Wilson in her usual raunchy style. (“Stop milking it!” she meows.)

Bustopher Jones (Corden) is the well-groomed glutton, in spats, who eats his way through his entertaining number. We also meet Gus (short for Asparagus) played by McKellen, an elderly feline who recounts a life in the theater.

And then we have Bombalurina! Swift enters dangling from on high on the moon for her number, an appropriately showy piece.

But the big number in “Cats” is, and will always be, “Memory,” sung by Grizabella (Hudson), a former Glamour Cat now shunned and looking for redemption. Hudson sings it twice (always crying), so don’t worry if you don’t hear the full belt the first time.

Does all this work? Well, it depends on how you feel about “Cats.” Did you love the show? You’ll find stuff to love here. Did you hate it? Maybe you’ll have both reactions? That’s possible too.