Even after seeing this movie, I still think that Catwoman can be an engaging character. Not the version in this movie mind you, but there is a lot of potential. Eartha Kitt was on to something sultry with her take on the character in the old Batman TV show. Michelle Pfeiffer put a good jolt in my shorts with her version in Batman Returns. Now we have the gorgeous Halle Berry in an entire movie dedicated to the character and she... well... jiggles?
I hardly know where to start with this movie. Perhaps with the director. Pitof. Yeah that's right, another one of those guys so pretentious and convinced of the idiotic auteur theory that he goes by one name. Ugh. Let's take a moment to consider another recent example of the one name director disease: McG, who brought us the brilliantly bad Charlie's Angels and then the just plain bad Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle. Clearly this is not a good idea. Remember people, when your friends want to go by only name, you don't let them. Tell them it will turn them into a pompous jackass with no ability to direct. It's the humane thing to do.
Anyway, back to the movie. Halle Berry stars as Selena Kyle... sorry, Patience Phillips, a designer of advertising campaigns. She works for a cosmetics company that is about to release a new product that eliminates all signs of aging. It's the holy grail of cosmetics. Unfortunately it has the nasty side effect of turning the user into what looks like a burn victim if they ever stop using it. Oopsie. Naturally they decide to go ahead and sell the stuff anyway. Patience accidentally overhears all this due to the world's most incompetent security (apparently George Tenet moonlights in bad movies) and is subsequently shot at and flushed into the sewer system. That's it, the movie is over, you can all go home. No, just kidding. You don't get off that easily. Patience lies dead in a pool of sewage until a mystical cat from Egypt gives her a hairball... sorry, no, mouth to mouth. From that point on she has the abilities and habits of a cat. I spent the next few minutes wondering if she woke up clean the next morning because she took a shower or licked herself clean. If it weren't for the sewage, the second option could have made this a five star movie.
Naturally, there is a love interest for Patience, a cop by the name of Tom Lone. I'm assuming his last name refers to the number of operating brain cells in his head because this might just be the dimmest cop to ever appear in a movie. The number of massive clues he has to miss or require help in translating as to the identity of Catwoman could fill a good sized dumpster. Don't you think after a slithery wrestling match with Catwoman, followed by sleeping with Patience he would figure it out? No, Tom has to be practically impaled with a clue before that lone brain cell starts to work a little. Benjamin Bratt, no stranger to cop roles, must have been heavily intoxicated to put up with this crap.
The villains are George and Laurel Hedare (Lambert Wilson and Sharon Stone), the guy who runs the cosmetics company and his wife, a formal model. Wilson hams it up like a man who know he already committed career suicide when he signed to contract to be in this movie. Sharon Stone hams it up like someone who wants to prove she can still be a movie star. If she were any more airbrushed in this movie she would look like Gumby. They aren't exactly the most threatening villains. The main threat they pose is in sneering people to death.
The editing of this movie is from the Michael Bay school where if you don't let an image remain on screen for even as long as a second, the audience won't recognize how bad it is. They won't make any sense of it either but confusion is prized over revulsion. This style makes me nuts because the film is reduced to a blur of images that completely fail to tell me what the hell is going on. It's like getting a roll of film developed and then riffling the pictures like a flipbook rather than taking time to examine them individually. You learn nothing that way. Almost as irritating is the decision to use CGI for no apparent reason. There are countless shots of a digital Berry strutting around, begging the question of why they didn't just film the real Berry doing the same thing. It would have been cheaper and looked better.
Believe it or not, this isn't a truly awful film. I would say it's just south of mediocre. But the barrage of missteps and bad ideas overwhelms the handful of moments where some talent and skill can be spotted. Who thought that a scene where a loony cat lady rubs a ball of catnip all over Berry's face was a good idea? Who thought that S&M costume was a smart move? Things like that make it hard to remember Patience's salacious best friend or Berry walking all over the furniture like a cat. I certainly don't recommend the movie but don't let anyone tell you it's the worst thing imaginable. It's not even the season's worst cat themed movie. We have Garfield for that.
- John Shea
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