So you are the basically the “it” woman in Hollywood. You won an Oscar for Monster’s Ball, became a Bond Girl, showed your breasts in Swordfish and got mad money for doing that. You are at the top of your game, a proverbial platter of projects that producers would love to have you in and you think to yourself, “comic book movies are in right now, why not do one”. It’s an honest thought, wanting to be in the latest Hollywood movie trend, so you use your status to get a starring role instead of being just that white-haired woman from that mutant movie. Then it happens, you get the role of a lifetime, a starring vehicle as one of comic’s sexiest and complicated hero/villains out there and it is all yours.
The sad thing is, the movie is directed by a guy with one name, Pitof, and saddled with 20+ script writers and the movie is Catwoman, or at least Catwoman in name only.
Someone should have buried this deeper in the kitty litter.
Patience Philips (Halle Berry) seems destined to spend her life apologizing for taking up space. Despite her artistic ability — she has a more than respectable career as a graphic designer for Hedare Beauty, a Goliath cosmetics company — Patience is excruciatingly shy, quick to take blame, and, not surprisingly, more than a little depressed at the end of the day. This comes to somewhat of a screeching halt when Patience not only inadvertently lands herself in the middle of a corporate conspiracy of gargantuan proportions, but on the city police force’s most wanted list. Newly quipped with a mysterious feline prowess, Patience is a different person come nighttime — more accurately, a catwoman. Elusive, untamed, powerful, stealthy, and not necessarily prone to erring on the side of good, Patience has gone from doormat to vigilante. Police officer Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt), who has fallen for shy Patience, is determined to apprehend Catwoman and figure out her role in a recent crime spree, though his fascination with her doesn’t cease with the end of his shift and it threatens to lead to the downfall of himself, his investigation, and the woman who was once the timid Patience Philips. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
So apparently, no one on the directing side, writer side, producing side or anyone general knows what the source material was all about. I am sure they saw one image of Catwoman in one of the many good comics she has been in and thought, “hot chick with big knockers in a skin tight catsuit, quick someone tell the US Mint to start printing money for us”. That is all this movie is, Halle Berry in a catsuit slinking around on screen looking real nice. While the male in me appreciates that, a hope that the producers had when making this movie for the male demographic, even her seductive looks aren’t enough to stop this cat from losing all its lives.
Catwoman is a shit storm of crap writing, laughable dialog and a demeaning script/plot for a strong female character like Catwoman. I realize that this character is a female and thus the female demographic might have been hoping to see her battle street crime or a guy who happens to be a dick, but no. No Catwoman is challenged with the most difficult task of all, fighting big makeup or something. That’s right, Catwoman is fighting the release of a toxic skin cream from a dominating female CEO (Sharon Stone). How fucking sad is that? I mean Catwoman has a lot of story lines that she could deal with and is a troubled character given her comic back story, so in order to strip away all that makes her interesting, she fights some L’oreal company. Yeah, woman superhero fighting woman things apparently.
The movie itself is a wreck. The one name director decides to treat this movie like a video game/music video/Victoria’s Secret Runway show. Terribly laughable action sequences are much CGI than real, the special effects are overused to the point of video game quality and the acting is atrocious. The villains basically say their lines like they are delivering the final “Now I have you” moment in the movie that you just laugh and laugh. The story and origin of Catwoman is all mystical and no full explanation is given. The love story is just there cause every woman in a movie has to love someone and I would have preferred to see a bunch of cats direct this movie.
Sigh, this makes me yearn Michelle Pfeiffer to put back on the suit and show this current Catwoman what’s what.
