July 23, 2004

Seeing Catwoman after months of speculation is like, well, putting out a fire with gasoline…

It is unfair that this wannabe franchise - more appropriate for kitty litter than the litter of sequels it hoped to inspire - will forever be tagged "Halle Berry's Catwoman" rather than "Pitof's Catwoman" or "Denise DiNovi's Catwoman." The spectacular failure of this film has just about nothing to do with Ms. Berry. What Halle and her peeps are responsible for is putting an Oscar player - and then winner - in three non-acting roles (Bond, X2, Catwoman) in a row, two of them pure "look at my body first" roles. The "Oscar Curse" that some actresses suffer has to do with a career high and a great performance from an actress who is more of an actress than a movie star. The great Kathy Bates suffered from this somewhat. Jennifer Connelly, oddly enough, has avoided suffering the same by saying "no." Ms. Berry should have been so smart.

But I digress…

Catwoman lives on that border between "so bad that it's laughable" and "so bad that you want the hours of your life that you invested back." It is hard to be sure which way it leans because I saw it in a room full of journalists and we all respectfully stayed (relatively) silent for the first two acts of this become-a-distant-memory-before-you-can-say-"Pluto-Nash." But by the third act, I couldn't help but to laugh out loud. As a film stylist, Pitof makes pretty pictures but he has all the obsession with close-ups of any first time hack, and his action scenes look like they have been through a desperation blender trying to make a milkshake out of a phlegmy fur ball.

As for the screenplay, which is not good enough to make it to a pilot on the WB much less deserving of seeing the light of a day as a pricey wide release, I'm going to give away one remarkably stupid plot point that won't ruin anything for you (as though that was possible here). I'm willing to allow for a comic book movie to indulge in the classic silliness of a person close to the hero when using their real identity not recognizing them when they have on a little mask. Some masks, like the Bat cowl, combined with a real change in voice tone, might be enough to actually distract someone from guessing for a while. And it's remarkable how every jaw looks square in that thing. But there aren't many women who look like Halle Berry, head to toe. And while Superman films have always had that slight hyper-reality that suggests unreality, Catwoman seems to want to be down to earth when Catwoman is living as Patience Phillips. So, how Benjamin "The Nice Guy Mannequin" Bratt fails to connect Catwoman and Patience is amazing… especially when Patience is leading him right into the connection. But anyway - and here, finally, is the plot point - when Patience buys Bratt a coffee after a missed coffee days and writes "Sorry" on it it's weird, but buyable. When Catwoman leaves a bag of stolen gems for the police with the exact same "Sorry" written on its side the similarity is laugh-inducing in the audience, who gets it right away. When Bratt notices the "Sorry" but fails to make the connection, it is laughable. When it turns out that Bratt has kept the old, wet coffee cup days after it was delivered, is a groaner.

You think it can't get worse, right?

When Bratt takes the coffee cup and the bag to a handwriting expert, the audience is making cat calls. Then the handwriting expert explains not that the signatures are identical, which we can see, but goes off on a rant of handwriting analysis, psychoanalyzing Patience and Catwoman with a hand heavier than Harold's putting marijuana in Kumar's bong. But still, our policeman can't put the gorgeous 5' 2" tall black woman with the flawless body together with the gorgeous 5' 2" tall black woman with the flawless body and the leather suit and mask.

Moron!!!

But isn't it campy fun? I don't know. Sharon Stone finally gets the chance to play the character she was literally named to play. But yawn. Lambert Wilson is stuck with an unnecessary mid-European accent for no reason other than the fact that his French accent was so compelling in The Matrix Reloaded that they had to dump it. Once you've seen Halle bobbing on top of Billy Bob, a pair of ripped leather pants and a leather bikini top isn't going to stir one's interest.

The cat that brings Halle back to life is good for a laugh or two, especially as he CGs his way through one scene and the camera inexplicably flies down his throat.

Catwoman is not quite Charlie's Angeles: Full Throttle because, unlike the spastic colonesque McGroaner, the film is not entertaining enough in any way, nor is there enough commercial potential for the film to infect other studio product. This one will be put in the time crapsule and be forgotten faster than the name of the guy having sex with Paris Hilton in that tape.

Where the film could be analogized to the mother's-little-helper editing of Charlie's Angeles: Full Throttle is in its stylistic relationship to video games in the most blatant way I have ever seen in a studio feature, other than in an intentionally games-referencing film like Spy Kids 3D. Catwoman herself is often done as a CG character and the visual element with which they transpose the CG into live footage of Halle Berry walking with a cat-like gait is repeated over and over. Moreover, you can see the transformation easily. There is no real reason for Catwoman to be CGed. Nothing she does as a CG character is so interesting that it is worth the bother. Of course, the Luddites who fear the progress of CG and modern editing techniques, some of whom cited skilled, innovative editing in a movie of quality like The Bourne Supremacy as a weakness, will probably give Catwoman a pass, since it is so over the top and they really don't understand the work they are watching unless it brings itself to the viewer's attention. But it has the short-burst aesthetic… the lack of logic in human movement… the unbelievable physicality… the emotional disconnection of video games. And if it was at all compelling, I would worry about its influence.

Unfortunately, I can't quite dredge up the emotion to slam this film as hard as The Day After Tomorrow, which had much bigger ambitions and much grander failures. Catwoman is a dog. And none of Halle Berry's animal analogous body parts can change that. Perhaps some day it will be watched like Showgirls is watched now, camp lovers waiting for that glorious moment when Halle attempts Eartha Kitt cat-speak and sounds like she has something stuck in her throat. But I prefer to think of the film being taken out to the garbage like so much used litter. Perhaps Ms. Berry and Vin Diesel can team up with Tara Reid in an action movie called "Buried" and get it over with already. Or perhaps she will turn down the big money, if there is any left out there for her, and try to be an actress again. To mix a metaphor, being Catwoman is a bitch.

And remember to spay or neuter your pets, folks!

E ME. You know how.