In its first act, Catwoman excels, boasting
flavorfully cheesy sketches of pure genius. The scenes
represent something along the lines of a mix of
Spider-Man and Mission Impossible, thoroughly
involving us in a hip style and a booming soundtrack.
Viewers will be happily surprised as they immerse
themselves in the corniness of the material, only to be
desperately disappointed in the final two thirds. As the
film progresses, it gets much worse, and the lack of
seriousness becomes a dreadful burden to its
performance. In fact, every bit of it that features
“Catwoman” is absolutely terrible; the reason the
beginning is so pleasurable to watch is because Halle
Berry’s Patience Phillips has not yet become
half-feline. Why would anyone want to buy a ticket to a
film, simply to be disgusted by its rapid decline as it
furthers in duration?
Catwoman opens as
Patience narrates over her dead body, floating in a
stream. She announces that she is humbled by her death,
in her Catwoman-personality, because if she had not been
killed, she would never have been able to experience
true excitement. This sense of euphoria, however, does
not lead to heroism. This is a movie with an evil
protagonist and even dirtier bad-guys. Rarely does a
motion picture succeed when it has an unlikable main
character, and with such a careless director,
Catwoman had no chance to bear any sort of quality.
Catwoman then rewinds a
few days from the opening incident and shows us to a
much more human Patience (who is, essentially, the only
“good” character in the film). She works for a beauty
cream company, as a publicity artist. Finding her
ad-work to be less than desirable, and critiquing the
light shades of red used (which he ordered), her boss
(Lambert Wilson) provides her with a deadline for
correction. After she finishes tweaking the logo of
sorts, she must run it down to the company’s
headquarters, after discovering that a delivery man
isn’t going to pick it up for her. There, she finds the
product’s founders discussing its long-term effects,
which make the skin it is applied to raw and worn. They
see Patience spying on them in the room, and decide that
they must kill her. When she hides in the enormous water
pipes of the building, in attempts to run away, they
flush her out of the building with the rushing liquid,
and the impact kills her. Patience’s dead body, now
lying in the dirt of the earth, is then surrounded by
cats, and resurrected. On the succeeding day, she’s
dressed in black leather and equipped with a new hairdo,
ready to seek revenge on the evil heads of the
cream-company.
Once Patience morphs into
Catwoman, viewers will become strongly apathetic toward
her, as Halle Berry’s performance isn’t put to good use.
The film turns into strictly an action picture, after
the first forty-five minutes, and all of the actors are
mere puppets, swaying on the hundred-million dollar
stage of the director, who calls himself Pitof. I think
I was angrier with the cats who resurrected Patience
into an S&M-obsessed monster more than anyone else in
Catwoman, because they were the very creatures who
forced the movie to continue. I’m not sure that I’ll
ever be able to look at my hairball-puking house-pets in
the same way, again.
The special effects in the
movie are superb, just as they have been in every other
big summer blockbuster, currently in release. Do visuals
really matter anymore, though? Are they truly more
important than pure substance? It seems as though
moviegoers believe so, seeing that they keep buying
tickets to crap, such as this.
I would much rather see A
Cinderella Story a second time than I would
Catwoman. Both films are rather uninspired, but the
difference between them is that the former puts emphasis
on its charming performances and light tone, which leads
to its ultimately succeeding. This picture, on the other
hand, resorts to big brawls and bright lights, in its
disparity. It’s dishonest, cold, and nonchalant, unlike
its rather direct and upfront competitor. Watching it,
at least during its final two acts, I was in
indescribable pain. Whatever campy, comic value it
possesses in the beginning is diminished, come its end. Halle Berry has shown that she can do much more than
this. At least, this time, she manages to keep her
clothes.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews (7.26.2004)