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Catwoman
Yeah. Someone forgot to clean the litter box.

Starring: Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson, Frances Convoy
Director: Pitof (Yes he only has ONE name)
Screenwriter: Ed Solomon

Reviewed by Larry Stanley

I will be spoiling parts of this film. Don’t worry, you will thank me later.

Now that my eyes have stopped bleeding I can get this review finished.

Where to start, where to start? I mean, there are so many things wrong with Catwoman, finding a place to begin describing them is just about impossible.

The director, Pitof, has only directed one other film.  Vidocq from 2001 and apparently he didn’t learn from his mistakes in that one. Most of his time behind the camera has been spent as visual effects and digital visual supervisor.

"Halle! You're giving us a bad name!"

Catwoman has very little to do with the DC Comics character, or the character created by Bob Kane in Batman Comic Books. First appearing in Batman # 1 in 1940, she has been the only villain that eventually beat, cornered and defeated Batman so badly that he never fought her in costume again.

Catwoman has been an air hostess, abused wife, pet shop owner, hooker and villain.

Apparently, none of these backgrounds was good enough for the director and writers of Catwoman. They made her into a shy, quiet artist named Patience Phillips, working at a dead-end and thankless job for a (of course) cruel and petty boss.

Forced to redo her work for an upcoming ad campaign she delivers the work to a factory where her evil boss is waiting for her. Overhearing the discussion that the new beauty cream the company is on the verge of releasing is addictive and if stopped will cause the user to have skin that looks decades older then it really is, she is murdered.

While lying on a garbage heap, her body is approached by a cat that she had attempted to rescue earlier from a building ledge. The cat brings her back to life, and gives her the proportionate powers of a spider… uhm… CAT, allowing her to be able to see in the dark, climb walls, scurry along the edges of high buildings, smash through walls, and smell rain. Yeah.

Do you know the budget for Catwoman was around $100,000,000? As compared to The Hulk at $120,000,000, or Spider-Man 2 at $200,000,000 you would know that the special effects and CGI might not be as well done or as impressive as these other two films. But they should be better than a film at $75 million, right? Or even one that cost $33 million? Well, Daredevil was the 75 and Punisher hit the mark at only $33, so why were their special effects better than Catwoman?

Is it because the company wasted money on computer generated city images instead of using stock footage? Now I don’t mean images of distant buildings, or something like that. I mean that apparently every city on the planet earth was destroyed at some point. Because from the opening scene everything is a computer generated image of city-scapes, with the exception of one or two places. Everything. It looks like there was no city left in reality where this thing could have been filmed, and they had to create one.

Cripes, they ripped off so much from the first Batman film, why not just re-use the sets and images and save some money?

Yes, they ripped off Batman. Don’t argue, just listen. First, you have something that causes the face of the villain to be distorted. Second, the villain is obsessed with the way they look and finally the villain falls to their death from a high building in a great battle between the good guy and the bad.

And don’t even think about the final scene of Catwoman and the moon.

So, we have stuff from Catwoman and Spider-Man. Is there anything original in this movie? Well, a couple of things. One was Patience best friend Sally (Alex Borstein). She was the funny over the top comedy relief that this film actually didn’t need at the beginning, but turned into one of the few good things in it.

Something else original was the idea of how there have been many Catwomen before Patience. Well, not really original. I mean there have been many Catwomen in the Comics, but you get the idea. I mean, there was the whole air hostess, abused wife, pet shop owner, hooker thing. So maybe there really was only one thing original. Who’s counting? Not the writer or director.

Yes, the film has a few good one liners but that is not what a film like this is supposed to be about.

And yes, Halle Berry looks great in the Catwoman leather outfit. I mean, she looks really good as Catwoman. When she walks it is a thing of wonder and beauty. I am talking a Tina Turner strut times three. Mercy.

If the whole film had been Berry walking around for 90 some minutes in that black leather, with her hips swinging it would have been a great movie. Too bad someone had the idea of trying to write a story or adding other stuff.

Lord, I do like to watch that strut.

Anyway, while the film is not abysmal it is crap. The character in the movie is almost insulting to Comic fans, Bob Kane, Batman, Selina Kyle and DC Comics in general.

But, I know what is wrong with this movie.

Do you remember Men in Black? The first one. Think about it for a second. Remember the tongue in cheek attitude? The subtle humor? Remember the characters and how they delivered their lines?

Now, think of that whole film done serious. No humor, just straight drama.

That is almost what was done here, with Catwoman. Outside of Berry and Borstein, everyone took their role to serious. They seemed to think they were making great art, instead of a film about a 60 year old character that has developed a following on her own, set standards that dozens of female heroes and villains have tried to hit before and failed.

The film tried to be a social comment, but fell about 20 levels. They should have used the tongue in cheek attitude that the story deserved, or used the original character and left it alone.

Catwoman deserves to be watched at home on a DVD player so you can fast forward through everything but her walking. This movies does not empower women or give them something to believe in.

Josie and the Pussy Cats empowered women better than Catwoman.  

Rating:

(1 out of 4 stars)

Larry Stanley is the editor and publisher of Penguin Comics and Movies, located at http://www.penguincomics.net and has done over 500 movie reviews in his career. He is also a contributing reviewer to Cultcuts magazine (http://www.cultcuts.net) and Columbia360 (http://www.columbia360.com/) as well the magazine Devine Exploitation.

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