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Film review

Feature-length cat fight

Action and Halley Berry's skimpy leather outfits trounce plot in the latest incarnation of Catwoman.

By PHILIP BOOTH
Published July 22, 2004

[Photo: Warner Bros.]

Benjamin Bratt, left, plays a detective rubbed the right way by Halle Berry in Catwoman.

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Catwoman, the summer's second-best superhero movie, a $100-million extravaganza directed by former special-effects supervisor Pitof, suffers from an identity crisis.

Pitof and his screenwriters, toying with issues of female empowerment, might have taken the girl-power theme to its logical extreme and pushed over into sheer campiness. Heck, genre-perfect stereotypes - the chubby female best friend (Alex Borstein) and catty gay male colleague - are already in place.

But the filmmakers, perhaps worried about the core comic-book audience (young, male, straight) opt for more action-adventure elements. Yes, much of the budget was spent on getting Catwoman into skimpy leather outfits and onto roofs and walls, where she scampers around like Spidey without his webs.

Instead of a heroine as seductive as Eartha Kitt or Julie Newmar in the old Batman television series, we get Halle Berry, merely foxy and too self-possessed for this cartoony role.

Instead of the Caped Crusader as a potential love interest, we get an uncomplicated police detective played by Benjamin Bratt. Instead of Gotham City, we get a neon-lit New York, sort of. Instead of a seriously frightening villain, we get Sharon Stone, makeup overdone and a drawn-tight face as hard as steel. Instead of an apocalyptic meltdown, we get an extended cat fight.

There's another, perhaps bigger problem: Kitty cats, no matter how they're dressed up or what genealogy is added to the mix, simply aren't scary. A sequence detailing a transfer of life force from a house pet to a dead woman is intended to be eerie, but it's nothing of the sort. A long montage during the credits, as newspaper articles and old books reveal the long history of creepy cats and the women who love to look like them, comes off as filler.

Holy catnip, Robin! (He's also missing in action, like his buddy.) Why should anyone give a flying fur ball about this new-generation Catwoman?

Patience Phillips (Berry) shows up DOA, much like the movie itself. "It all started the day that I died," she announces in a voiceover, over a shot of a watery grave. Then on to a flashback: Patience, a gifted, if rather disorganized artist working in the ad department of a huge cosmetics concern, accidentally discovers that a new product line is dangerously flawed. (Notice the similarity with the crisis at the heart of last week's I, Robot?) She pays dearly for that discovery, taking a scary swim in a drainage pipe.

Catwoman is born shortly later, atop a pile of glistening rocks not far from the scene of the crime. Soon, Patience/Catwoman is hissing at dogs and mean people, going into heat over catnip, chowing down cans of Starkist, slurping up sushi, doing amazing things with a basketball and unleashing her full powers of destruction on a bunch of leather-clad partiers whose music is keeping her awake nights.

She consults a witchy woman (Frances Conroy) for some clues about her apparent transformation. The answer: "You died and were reborn."

Catwoman, aside from romantically ensnaring the cop on her trail, accomplishes little, aside from avenging her death. She does acquire a mission, though: There are sequels in her future. Want proof? The film's last line is "And so my journey begins."

Grade: C+

Director: Pitof

Cast: Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson, Frances Conroy, Alex Borstein.

Screenplay: John D. Brancato, Michael Ferris and John Rogers

Rating: PG-13; violence, sexual innuendo

Running time: 108 min.

[Last modified July 21, 2004, 19:48:45]