TS Eliot “would have had a sense of humour” about the much derided film adaptation of Cats despite the drubbing it has received from reviewers around the world, according to his estate.

Starring big names including Taylor Swift, Idris Elba and Ian McKellen, 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. The film has been variously described by critics as “revolting and briefly alluring” and “two seconds away from turning into a furry orgy in a dumpster”.

But Clare Reihill, who administers the poet’s estate – which was not involved with the adaptation – called it beautiful and said she believes 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.”

Eliot himself, she said, would probably have approved. “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 acknowledged 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.”