CATWOMAN - REVIEW

There are infamously bad superhero movies and then there's Catwoman, a film so clueless one wonders if the filmmakers were even aware of the character's existence before making the film.

Calling Pitof's movie a Batman spin-off is a stretch, to say the least. Not only does none of the action take place in Gotham City but Halle Berry's character is not Selina Kyle and she doesn't so much dress up as Catwoman to steal jewels and/or fight bad guys as she does have super-powers to use however she pleases, kinda like The Mask but not fun. Looking past the fact that the film is set in New York, Berry's character is actually called Patience and can crawl over walls like Spider-Man (because cats do that?), she becomes Catwoman when an animated cat breathes on her face, said cat being an Ancient Egyptian messenger in charge of choosing Catwomen across the centuries in order to, in this particular case, stop a deadly make-up from being sold all over the world.

Let me repeat that: deadly make-up.

If that isn't the most ludicrous thing you've ever heard...

Frankly, if that and loud party-goers are the main crimes going on at the heart of New York then there really is no need for any superhero. You really have to try your hardest to come up with something this stupid and this detached from the source material. I must also mention the script that boasts about a hundred lame cat puns even Eartha Kitt in the old TV series would be embarrassed to say and some of the worst dialogs you'll ever hear in any movie. As for the soundtrack it's primarily composed of headache-inducing R&B because when you think "Catwoman", you think Destiny's Child. This film is a perplexing creation and begs the question: who was this made for? Batman fans? There's certainly no mention of the hero or anything relating to the DC comics at any point. Halle Berry fans? That's niche. Children? Can kids really identify with the threat of deadly make-up?

Which leaves... cats?

A film by cats, for cats?

I just don't know.

Halle Berry, to her credit, tries hard to give some kind of performance that would make sense but sadly fails and she, along with everyone else around her including Sharon Stone and Lambert Wilson, is predominantly awful from start to finish and well deserving of her Razzie award. As for the special effects, they are simply dire: Catwoman's every move is CGI'ed to death. Whether Halle Berry's jumping, walking, running or just sitting, she looks like a PS1 video game sprite. On top of that, the cats are CGI, the entire city is CGI and although that costume is probably the best thing about the movie, it still looks ridiculous and a long way off from the perfect stitched-up catsuit Michelle Pfeiffer wore in Batman Returns. This is not a Catwoman movie, it's a film about "a cat-woman" who just happens to enjoy leather and puns like the comic-book character does.

It is certainly an achievement to make a Catwoman film this bad but when you know it can be done right, it makes this train-wreck even more frustrating. Everything about it is misguided and, to this day, it remains arguably the worst superhero film ever made and that's saying something.

A meow-sterpiece of fail.

You heard me.