It’s an irony of cinema that you can actually wind up having a better time at a film if you go to see it with absolutely no positive expectations at all than if you have high hopes. In the latter case, you can be disappointed. In the former, all the film has to do is hold your interest and you come out ahead.
That was the case with “Catwoman.”
Seeing the film out of a sense of obligation to keep current with comic book films, Kath and I found a movie that was better than expected…probably because we thought it would suck.
The complaint that it has no relationship whatsoever to the DC Catwoman seems somewhat pointless since that ship sailed years ago with “Batman Returns.” Instead “Catwoman” endeavors to follow-up to, and provide some sort of coherent backstory to, the loopy origin of Catwoman as seen in BR, a film in which the only resemblance she bore to DC’s Catwoman was that she was named “Selina Kyle” (and could just as easily have been called “Patience Phillips” as she is here.)
The plot itself is astoundingly dumb, centering on a new cold cream that’s actually lethal. Naturally that’s what any company would want to produce: A product that will get them sued into bankruptcy and beyond. It’s Patience’s overhearing of this nasty plot device that gets her killed and then revived as the titular heroine.
Plus the dialogue is repeatedly wince worthy, with ostensibly clever lines landing all over the place like hairballs.
But what makes the thing go is Halle Berry and Benjamin Bratt. Berry is all pelvic thrust and feral intensity, and just a lot of fun to watch, while Bratt as the love interest (fleshed out about as much as the female love interest usually is in male-dominated actioners) takes a nothing character and makes you care about what happens to him.
As for Sharon Stone, with her ham-handed acting and arch detachment, she seems to be rehearsing for what is, to me the inevitable role for her: Nora Desmond in a remake of “Sunset Boulevard.”
PAD
• 
Peter, you could have waited for it to come out on cable. You’re only encouraging more bad writing by going thru all the effort to buy the tickets for and attending the CATWOMAN movie.
— Ken from Chicago
P.S. Just say “No” to bad writing. Friends don’t let friends watch or read crap.
(laughs)
Your entry reminded me of this article in The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4031&n=3
Apparently Catwoman falls into the “so bad it’s good again, but not really that good, come to think of it” category.
PAD, if you thought this movie was better than expected, you must have expected to be bleeding internally by the end of the picture. With respect to the wonderful Onion article, mentioned above, this was an absolutely abysmal movie (full review, written for Green Man Group, below). Even PAD seems to acknowledge this: After saying it wasn’t as bad as he thought, he then tells us “the plot itself is astoundingly dumb,” “the dialogue is repeatedly wince worthy,” and “[Sharon Stone’s] ham-handed acting and arch detachment.” (In fairness, the filmmakers must have had very low expectations as well: You must think very little of a movie not to bother mentioning that the star won an Academy Award!)
In the past few years, there’s been a move to make comic book movies better, aimed as much at adults as children. (Moreso, sometimes, as the comic book movies reference comics we older folks would recognize: Wolverine’s yellow spandex, Daredevil clutching a stone crificix, Spider-Man’s mask hanging out of a garbage can.) These new movies take themselves more seriously (even while having fun) and try to work on the same level as “traditional” action movies. CATWOMAN is a throwback to when these movies had moronic plots, awful dialogue, and camp instead of quality. This is the worse SUPERHERO movie since Joel Schumacher took over the Batman franchise; and just ask the fans what the positive results of that were.
As for Halle Berry, I agree that she looked amazing in the outfit. However, there’s more than enough t&a out there that one can find fun eye candy without sitting through 90 minutes of an awful film. ‘Sides, while Halle looked (and moved) incredibly sexily, the Gawd-awful dialogue pretty much obviated any eroticism by replacing it with stupidity. There’s a 2005 calendar with pictures from the movie, which I recommend for those horny men and women: You get to see nothing but Halle in her Catwoman outfit (it took the movie over 45 minutes to get there), and the calendar has a better plot.
The movie ends with the hint of a sequel: The abysmal box office (and abysmal word of mouth) guarantees there won’t be one. With a calendar out, all we can really hope for now is a pørņø parody/adaption that recreates the costume. (This isn’t hard to imagine: There are at least 2 other pørņøš with “Catwoman” in the title, and the Catwoman-style mask has been around in the adult industry for ages; check RED VIBE DIARIES 3 and NEW WAVE HØØKÊRS 5 for 2 prominent examples.) And Halle: Choose wiser next time.
And if that wasn’t enough for ya, here’s a full review!
Catwoman
Reviewed by James Lynch
If all you need in a movie is Halle Berry in a tight, revealing leather outfit cracking a whip, stop reading this right now and go see Catwoman. If you care about anything else in a movie
All I can say about Benjamin Bratt is that he is nothing more than eye candy for the ladies. His acting ( if you can call it that) sucks. I haven’t seen Catwoman. None of the reviews I heard or read, including your opinion, really makes me want to rush right out to see it. Guess I’ll wait for the video.
Ok, so what you’re saying is, it is acceptable for them to make a “Catwoman” movie with a character who has nothing to do with the comic character save the name because Tim Burton already deviated from the character in another God-awful movie? Wouldn’t it have been better to not reinforce the misinterpretation of the character?
When I first heard that they were doing a catwoman movie, I was estatic, thinking that maybe it would live up to my expectations of the character- namely, Jim Balent’s version. Up until issue 78, Catwoman was my favourite comic book on the market.
Unfortunately, I was… let down, to say the least. I don’t understand why they felt they had to diviate from the character so much. That’s not Catwoman. One of the neat things about Catwoman is that she has no superpowers (like the Bat). And that’s just the top of the list. And while Halle Berry is amazing… She is not Catwoman. This movie hurts me, and I havn’t even seen it.
Having not seen it, the blond lady in the privews, who I can only assume is the villianess, reminds me a great deal of Emma Frost…
“It’s an irony of cinema that you can actually wind up having a better time at a film if you go to see it with absolutely no positive expectations at all than if you have high hopes. In the latter case, you can be disappointed. In the former, all the film has to do is hold your interest and you come out ahead.”
I had a similar experience when I saw a bootleg copy of Roger Cormans Fantastic Four movie.
Don’t get me wrong, this movie is baaaaaaaad. But as I was coming in expecting to hate it, I was struck by the things that I liked.
Unlike Catwoman, Fantastic Four was very faithful to the source material (which is always a plus) and they got the relationships between the characters down pat. Also- a very young Mercedes McNab as young Sue Storm!
I felt that if they had had the budget for, oh say, a few re-writes, better FX, and a better cast they would have made a very good FF movie.
Wheras, the producers of ‘Catwoman’ had a budget and star power, and they still made a worse movie than ‘FF’.