Catwoman
Length: 1 hour, 44 minutes
Studio: Warner Bros.
Website: http://catwoman.warnerbros.com/
Release Date: 2004-07-23
Cast: Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson, Frances Conroy
Director: Jean-Christophe ‘Pitof’ Comar
Screenwriter: Ed Solomon, John Brancato, Michael Ferris
Music Score: Klaus Badelt
WorkNameSort: Catwoman
Our Rating: 1.00
Well, we all knew this mangy stray was going to stink up the summer litter box (That costume? Really now!), but we at least thought we’d get a few good yuks out of it. Instead, Crapwoman is just plain old pathetic, a cynical and taxing trip through a thoroughly artificial world of obnoxious action, empowerment clichés, R&B cross-marketing and teeth-gnashing asides. Holding even less in common with the DC Comics antiheroine than did Michelle Pfeiffer’s nonetheless-fascinating 1992 portrayal, Halle Berry’s kitten-with-a-whip character is an ad designer who uses the ancient secrets of the feline race to prevent her evil bosses from ruling the world through cosmetics. That’s the cue for plenty of gratuitous sass about man’s centuries-old subjugation of woman – a message that resonates oddly with the movie’s burning desire to cram in more T&A shots than you’d get from a year’s subscription to Maxim. Rivaling Ms. Berry’s cleavage for screen time are endless, dizzying tracking shots that music-video director Pitof drops in every few minutes to establish that we are going somewhere, and fast. (Guess what? We’re not.) As in Gothika, Berry’s wretched performance is masked by the presence of an actress even worse than her – in this case, Sharon Stone, whose honey-baked ham of a role as an embittered ex-model simply must be seen to be believed. On second thought, don’t.
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2004.