A Review by Phil Calabro
2004, Warner Brothers/Village Roadshow, Dir. Pitof, Starring Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson, Frances Conroy, Alex Borstein, Michael Massee, Byron Mann
Catwoman has been one of the many talked-about movie this summer, which made me eager to go see the film in first place. The only problem now, is that after I'm done seeing the film, is reviewing the film. I think every other critic on the earth who reviewed this film used a bad connotation involving cats to summarize it, such as 'kitty litter' and 'hairball', so I'll be fairly direct - this movie sucked.
Patience Phillips (Berry) is a young artist working as an advertising designer at cosmetics megacorp Hedare, headed by George Hedare (Wilson) and wife Laurel (Stone) - whose biggest invention is about to hit the market in a week. But when Patience walks into a room and finds out that the new cream causes people's faces to deteriorate, she is killed upon the scene to cover it up. But an Egyptian Mau cat whom she saved a day earlier gives her new life, and a new look - Patience becomes Catwoman, revenging the people who killed her, and even falling in love with handsome cop (Bratt) who's getting suspicious over her activities.
What is Halle Berry, Oscar winner and beauty extraordinaire, doing in a hellish production such as this? Her character of Patience is as wooden as a national forest, and her character of Catwoman runs a bit on the line of a dominatrix and cheap hooker. She's not interesting, and when she tries to be, she is overacting immensely - it is obvious that she is not using her skills in this film. Benjamin Bratt is our stereotypical male, who loves helping out the kids, saving the day, and falling in love...no fun there. Sharon Stone is slightly enjoyable, as an evil Cruella deVil with a face of stone. But the ultimate props go to Alex Borstein, MadTV's former Miss Swan, for playing the most annoying character in a movie this year.
Nothing could've saved this movie - the premises are so laughable, and the actors could have done nothing with it. Everything I expected came to life, I even came close to wording out large chunks of dialogue in the film. We had our cat puns "cat's got your tongue"-kind of crap, and your pathetic stereotypes for a movie involving guns, so laughable the other audience members were looking at me and my friends for laughing. The visuals are so dreadful, that is looks as if they took their skylines for Grand Theft Auto - this takes the cake for the worst CGI effects in years.
The Bourne Supremacy's looking better every minute now. But for what I expected from Catwoman, I got. Bad writing, bad direction, surprisingly bad acting, just bad altogether. I was originally going to give it zero stars, but for those who are wondering, I gave it half a star for Halle Berry's boobs. Yep. That's about it. My cat's made lovelier turds than this.
0.5/4 stars
