It's got to take a lot of cheese for DC Comics to discreetly distance itself from one of its if not main then certainly most iconic characters. It took Michelle Pfeiffer's equally iconic portrayal of the Selina Kyle/Cat Woman character in Tim Burton's excellent "Batman Returns" to bring the idea of a Cat Woman film to the forefront. What might have sound like an appealing proposition back in 1992 somehow didn't feel as relevant more than a decade later. And for good reason...
The shy Patience Phillips stumbles upon the dirty secrets of her employer and gets killed for it. Not to worry though since she's brought back to life by some cat/deity of some kind and is reborn as the ballsy Catwoman so she can get an hair do, go shopping, do a bit of clubbing and incidentally find out who killed her and why... Oh and then she meets some generically good looking cop along the way... Vengeance and impossible love story ensues. The end. No, I mean it: the end.
Everything about "Catwoman" smells like left overs, the remains of a Sunday dinner stretched into a Monday casserole, exhausted from having been tried and done so many times before and bloated out of all proportions with stupidity and pointlessness so the script would be slightly thicker than a RSPCA leaflet. It would be very difficult to single out one particularly bad aspect of "Catwoman" from another as they are effectively interwoven into a complete disaster. This is such a formulaic Hollywood product that everything about its story (or lack of thereof) mired with plot holes the size of Australia is already known to whoever has ever watched a film before. Worse of all, it is so stereotypically marketed (even through its soundtrack) that all that was missing was Halle Berry snapping her fingers while saying to Sharon Stone "huh huh! No you don't girlfriend!". The performances of its cast is made of sheer non-commitment, an acute disaffection that is both understandable judging by the overall bêtise of the piece and insulting considering that people had to pay to see it. Last but certainly not least, the faux gloss of its CGI effects and the posturing of most of its camera works all conspire to hide the general lack of depth but actually manage to raise the bar of ugliness to brand new heights. So much so that it would be difficult to believe that it was all accidental.
It boggles the mind to think that Halle Berry could have ever thought "Catwoman" to be a good career move. Witnessing her, dressed for the oldest profession, struggling to act through this aimless debacle, the word "trapped" springs to mind. Was this some contractual obligations? What is certain here is that artistic integrity took a back seat after enough zeros were laid down on a cheque.
The shy Patience Phillips stumbles upon the dirty secrets of her employer and gets killed for it. Not to worry though since she's brought back to life by some cat/deity of some kind and is reborn as the ballsy Catwoman so she can get an hair do, go shopping, do a bit of clubbing and incidentally find out who killed her and why... Oh and then she meets some generically good looking cop along the way... Vengeance and impossible love story ensues. The end. No, I mean it: the end.
Everything about "Catwoman" smells like left overs, the remains of a Sunday dinner stretched into a Monday casserole, exhausted from having been tried and done so many times before and bloated out of all proportions with stupidity and pointlessness so the script would be slightly thicker than a RSPCA leaflet. It would be very difficult to single out one particularly bad aspect of "Catwoman" from another as they are effectively interwoven into a complete disaster. This is such a formulaic Hollywood product that everything about its story (or lack of thereof) mired with plot holes the size of Australia is already known to whoever has ever watched a film before. Worse of all, it is so stereotypically marketed (even through its soundtrack) that all that was missing was Halle Berry snapping her fingers while saying to Sharon Stone "huh huh! No you don't girlfriend!". The performances of its cast is made of sheer non-commitment, an acute disaffection that is both understandable judging by the overall bêtise of the piece and insulting considering that people had to pay to see it. Last but certainly not least, the faux gloss of its CGI effects and the posturing of most of its camera works all conspire to hide the general lack of depth but actually manage to raise the bar of ugliness to brand new heights. So much so that it would be difficult to believe that it was all accidental.
It boggles the mind to think that Halle Berry could have ever thought "Catwoman" to be a good career move. Witnessing her, dressed for the oldest profession, struggling to act through this aimless debacle, the word "trapped" springs to mind. Was this some contractual obligations? What is certain here is that artistic integrity took a back seat after enough zeros were laid down on a cheque.