Entry 7: Catwoman

Release Date: July 23, 2004
Budget: $120,000,000 (inflation adjusted)


After a much needed break, I'm back with Catwoman.. or Catwoman is back and I had to sit there and watch it happen.  I have to say, this was pretty tough to watch... probably not the worst movie in the bunch but one of my least favorites.  I knew I was in trouble when the Director's name was one word: "Pitoff".. the guy just sounds like an asshole.  Not even Halle Berry in a super tight cat outfit helped me power through this.

The story is your basic comic book plot: the makers of the beauty product Beau-Line have a secret mission to keep people using their product forever but one of their lackie design nerds, Patience Phillips (Halle Berry), overhears the discussions and therefore has to be killed.  Lucky for Patience, a crazy Egyptian cat shows up and revives her, which also has the unfortunate side effect for everyone involved of turning her into.... Catwoman!!     ... how trite.

Catwoman suffers in a lot of ways.  Let me count the ways: First, the movie gets off to a wickedly slow start.  I checked the clock on the DVD player; it was 15 minutes into the movie and the most exciting thing that happened was a cat climbed onto Patience's window.  Second, Halle Berry and Sharon Stone turn in a pair of  very poor acting performances. Granted, they were not given a lot of material to work with, but both tend to overact and make many scenes uncomfortable to watch.   Benjamin Bratt is tolerable as the nose-to-the-grindstone Detective and Patiencewoman's shallow love interest, but not nearly tolerable enough to save many scenes.  Finally, the special effects are bad, especially given this movie was made in 2004.  Midnight, the mysterious Egyptian cat, is animated about 75% of the time, but it looks like the talking cat on Jenn's phone that she uses to amuse our 2 year old child.  I am not amused, Pitoff.

Some of my other favorite parts of Catwoman were: 

• After being awaken by head cat, Catwoman stalks around the city in a weird fake cat hop/crab walk.  back to her apartment.  It looks like she really has to poop but doesn't want to use a public restroom...
• Midnight's owner, Ophelia Powers, is introduced to the story as a crazy human catlady to counsel Patience, but in the does not help the storyline much with her awkward presence.  I'm a dog person anyway.
• While in Ophelia's stinky, kitty-litter, box of a home, Patience gets her paws on some catnip and goes apeshit, which is laughably stupid.. stupid.
• In an effort to keep this movie going, they interject bad dance/hip hop music in about every 5 minutes.. it doesn't help.  Not only is it bad music, but at points it even dominates the movie.  For a second, I thought I might have accidentally rented the soundtrack.   
• The cheese factor hits a new high in the schoolyard basketball scene:  The music gets turned up and so does the urban sensuality.  Patience shows off some of her new cat moves on the b-ball court in a really bad sweater.  Just another scene that had me shaking my head and chuckling sadly.

The movie starts to crescendo (I use that term loosely) when Patience Catwoman prevents a jewelry store from being robbed but takes a few things for her self.  She really begins to get freaked out that she is part cat (took her long enough).   Patience goes again to discover the truth from the awful Ophelia "the cat hoarder" Powers.  From this point on the movie is kind of a blur of 90's terrible filled with more dance music, bad graphics, a blatantly whorish outfit, and multiple fight scenes, which are less like fight scenes and more like Indiana Jones style hip-hop dance offs.  The action is marked by gratuitous shots of Berry's boobs and belly to try to keep you awake.  The final fight/dance-off has Catwoman killing off Sharon Stone and then going to live amongst the shadows for the remainder of her days, which is a real bitch for the Detective who I don't think ever got a piece of cat action (sad meow...).

I give Catwoman a final score of -7.  Its stupid plot, bad special effects, and Sharon Stone and Halle Berry's pathetic attempt at acting make it painful to watch.  Benjamin Bratt, Pitoff's semi-competent camera work, and a big enough budget keep Catwoman out of the basement, which is more than I can say for the Rockies.
I think Battlefield Earth is next, which is gonna be awesome in a "ha ha, look at how stupid John Travolta is" sort of way.  Weeee!!!