Review of Catwoman (2004) by King S — 13 Aug 2011

After appearing in Batman Returns, Catwoman was initially supposed to return for the sequel. However, as if replacing Tim Burton with Joel Schumacher wasn't enough, Warner Bros. also opted to give Catwoman her own movie. The spinoff lay in development hell for years, before production finally began at the begining of the last decade. I imagine at the time when X-men and Spiderman were raking in big bucks it seemed like a surefire hit, but by the time it was released it became obvious that just being a superhero movie was going to cut it, and after negative publicity and awful reviews, Catwoman flopped hard at the box office.

After some opening credicts that for a moment actually lead us to believe that this might actually be a good movie, the film starts with a voiceover from Halle Berry as Patience Phillips saying that the story begins on the day she died, but then goes on to say that that part happens later. Wait, the begining of the story happens later on? Oh well, moving on....

Patience Phillips is a shy young woman working for company that makes beauty products. Her life is pretty miserable. She sees a cat one day standing on the ledge of a building and attempts to rescue it, putting her life in danger. Luckily, she survives, thanks to the help of a detective named Tom Lone, who is obviously smitten with Patience and comes later on that day to visit her while she's working, suggesting they go out on a date. It seems like things are finally working out for her, until she heads to the factory at night to deliver some papers and hears a conversion between a scientist and Laurel Hedare, the wife of the owner of the company, talking about the side effects of one of their new products. She is discovered, and disposed of by Hedare's guards, before brought back to life by the cat she recued. She becomes stronger, more catlike, and develops the secret identity of Catwoman. She is determined to find out more about the people who killed her, while Detective Tom Lone followes her, fascinated by both sides of her character.

Catwoman is a perfect example of what can happen to a comic book adaptation if you're not careful. It is one bad film. In fact, it is so bad that it actually gets points for being unintentionally funny. If you think the main character, who walks around in a ridiculus tight black outfit complete with a whip is campy, just check out the villain in this film. She's the model for the advitisements of a beauty company, who as said before is also the wife of the head of company and is furious at being replaced by someone younger, so she develops an evil line of cream, one that makes skin as hard as marble. And no, this is not a comedy (at least not intentionally) Heck, the scenes have the same dark look to them that you would find in The Dark Knight.

That's only the begining of the problems. The characters are for the most part forgettable, the writing is bad and so is the dialogue, while the action is poorly paced (spoilers: take the climax for example, where Catwoman hits Hedare repeatedly without any effect due to Hedare having turned her skin to marble using the cream she made. Hedare then beats Catwoman to a pulp with a pipe and is just about to fall when suddenly she seems to miraculously recover her strength, does a belly shake, knocking Hedare backward, before doing a loop around the room on all fours thanks to some bad CGI before striking Hedare, which this time is effective sending her off the building).

There's one thing that almost every movie should have if it is to join the category of so-bad-its-good and the filmakers haven't forgotten about it: Sharon Stone as the villain. She seems to have an almost unnatural habbit of selecting awful films, and her only film based on a comic book is no exception.

Halle Berry, meanwhile, does the best she can with what she's got which isn't much. After all, what can you do when you spend almost the entire film wearing either a skimpy black outfit or clothes that the filmakers obviously tried way too hard to make it apparent that she has is totally clueless in fashion, which are basically pajamas. Benjamin Bratt brings some charm to his role of Detective Lone, and I suppose it is interesting to see the female being the one with the double identity and the male fascinated with both the character and her secret identity, so I suppose that could be considered one of the film's few pluses.

There were supposedly a total of 28 writers on this film, which feels like someone wrote it in one night while he was half asleep. The film ends with (spoilers) Catwoman strutting across a roof in her catwoman outfit and a whip, which bassically sums up the appeal of the film. Unless you want to have some unintentional laughs or like to see Halle Berry in a revealing outfit, it's pretty much avoidable.