Review: Catwoman

Mousy Halle Berry stumbles upon something she shouldn’t at the cosmetics company she works for, and loses her life for her troubles. However, she is resurrected by a CGI cat (not as bad as you’ve heard, but certainly not realistic) and wakes up to a new set of cat-like super-powers and a leather fetish. So what’s a cat gal to do? Become a masked vigilante, and take down her nefarious boss (snooty-looking Lambert Wilson) and his seriously vain wife Sharon Stone! Frances Conroy plays a creepy but benevolent cat lady, Alex Borstein is the chubby and horny best friend, Michael Massee and Byron Mann are Goon #1 and Goon #2 (‘coz all good cosmetics companies need hired thugs, right?), and Benjamin Bratt is a cop tracking down the vigilante (not very well, I might add) and bedding Berry (he’s a bit better at that, I guess).

 

Directed by the pretentiously named Pitof, this 2004 comic book adaptation was the punching bag of every comedian and would-be critic at the time. Oh, it’s a bad film alright, but the whole cosmetic/fountain of youth thing actually was a clever idea in a female superhero movie. It’s just so appallingly handled…I actually kinda wish the film were worse, it might’ve been more fun to watch. Oscar winner Berry is horribly miscast, she’s far too mousy to be playing such a role (I know, she’s in the “X-Men” films, but she’s not any good in them! She wasn’t entirely awful as a Bond Girl, but even in real-life she gives off a fragile, possibly emotionally unstable vibe. I just couldn’t buy her here). What’s worse, is that the screenwriters have absolutely no idea who or what the character should be (Vigilante? Girl Next Door? Thief? S&M freak?), they never make her credible at all, and she certainly isn’t very likeable. Stone, as a campy villainess (who samples way too much of her own product, a Botox clone), isn’t much better, but she never really has been (and she’s never been sexy in my view) and is given a terribly written part anyway. Bratt is a non-entity as the love interest (isn’t he always?), and Borstein does the most shameful attempt at scene-stealing (read: ghastly mugging) I’ve seen in a long time. Wilson does a pretty good James Fox impersonation, but like Stone, is given no character to play at all.

 

The action is boring (when not rendered incoherent by the dreadful editing), the CGI variable, and the film as a whole is a mess. Meanwhile, the director previously did FX on “Alien: Resurrection” and “Amelie”, and makes sure everything here has a glossy glow like a Revlon commercial. It’s one of the few times when such a look might actually work, but it looks a little too artificial, even for a comic book film.

 

It’s not the worst film of the 00s (hey, it’s not nearly as arduous as sitting through “Van Helsing” or “Battlefield Earth”), but it’s still a bad film. Perhaps its bad reputation has come about because there have been so many well-regarded comic book movies made from 2000 onwards. There was a good film to be made here (John Waters or Joe Dante might’ve done something with it), but this isn’t it.

 

Rating: D+