Posted: 07/30/2004

Catwoman

(2004)

by Hank Yuloff

Let me take care of one thing first: Halle Berry (according to me along with enthusiastic accompaniment from my wife) is one hot bit of pussycat… And now back to your previously scheduled review.

Ahhhh… Summer… and with that wonderful time of year come the Popcorn Movies, those relatively mindless thrillers that mix effects with fantasy and not to plausible plot lines to bring a respite from the horrors of the current political incumbents. Catwoman is a very good example of a Popcorn Movie. Or actually, kind of a rock video.

Berry (Monsters Ball, X-Men, Bulworth) plays Patience Phillips, a graphic designer for a cosmetics company about to roll out a product that when used for a long period of time, can be toxic and deadly to the user. Phillips inadvertently finds out about this flaw and is rubbed out by the maniacal owner of the company (Lambert Wilson as George Hedare). Her body is brought back to life by magical cats (Andrew Lloyd Wealthy should do a musical about them) and becomes the most recent of a long line of cattlemen who’s bodies take on the agility, senses and attitudes of the feline species. Patience/Catwoman spends the rest of the movie plotting and seeking revenge. To explain it all to the audience, is Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under HBO), who may or may not be a catwoman, but whose cat is the one who transforms Patience and brings her back to her master.

Not a great story. Kind of unoriginal. But if you like hot women in leather outfits (a pretty broad target market), you won’t really notice. Berry is quite blithe as a cat….. There is one scene where she is on the phone at home and hops from one piece of furniture with the mannerisms I see every day with my own pets.

The bad guys, Wilson (Timeline) and his wife Laurel (Sharon Stone from Total Recall, Sliver, Intersection) are typically non-dimensional - you can tell they will be plotting no good things for good people - and you will root for their demise. Feel free to throw some of that popcorn at the screen.

The good guys, Benjamin Bratt (Law and Order TV, Miss Congeniality) as the love interest (evidently, he was hot, according to the same source as above) and Alex Borstein (Bad Santa) are typically nice people, helping Catwoman/Patience make her way in the world. Pity only one of them gets what they want at the end of the film.

The effects are rather cartoonish. Unlike Spiderman 2 where Spidey actually seems to plausibly be human when performing all the spider maneuvers, when Catwoman is climbing walls and jumping around rooms, you can almost tell where live action ends and CG begins. Its a comic book, so I won’t grade too much off for it.

For this, I give credit/blame to second time director Pitof. Most of his credits come as a Visual Effects/Filmographer so he might not be used to dealing directly with actors.

I know I have recommended worse movies for you to go see in the theater, so maybe if Fahrenheit 9-11 is sold out, this would be a good second choice, or maybe you can just sneak into it after paying $10 for the first movie you saw on a Saturday afternoon. Either way, it would be worth a look on the big screen.

Hank Yuloff has been allowed a “free pass” by his wife if Halle Berry ever calls and says she would love to meet him for “coffee”… We at Film Monthly hope it happens—we need the interview.

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