Wasn't Catwoman like a semi-villain? I distinctly remember her being not so nice, yet still, pleasantly attractive in earlier appearances. No matter, this movie is about as fair to its original comic book source as a movie version of "Sesame Street" starring the characters of "The Warriors" would be. Even though I would absolutely love to see David Patrick Kelly play Grover. But this movie version, or “take,” of "Catwoman" is something I really really could have done with out. Sort of like a severed hand. I don’t need it, and it makes my handwriting look horrid. Indeed I have a lot or reasons why I have no use for “Catowoman,” so pull up a chair, hammock, or Great Dane, and get ready for some laughter. You're not going to find it in "Catwoman" so you might as well find it in this review.

"Catwoman" represents the worst, the absolute vile and disgusting worst, in super hero movies, or just action movies in general. It doesn’t give a damn about its hero, the fan base, story telling, or what makes a movie good as a whole. It cares about Halle Berry’s breasts and how to use them in action scenes, even though she is usually a special effect. The movie makes me sick, utterly sick. If I saw this movie while in grade school, I would have a legitimate reason for going home early due to a pain in the stomach, head, and probably genitals. I went to a religious school, so it was okay for me to go home if my soul had been stolen right out of my chest.

This movie is divine proof that somewhere in the ancient ruins of Egypt lays a book of clichés. I know this, because I have seen "Catwoman." Archaeologists have been searching for it for ages, as well as producers, and lo and behold, those who brought us "Catwoman" have found it, thanks to director Pitof, who proves my theory that no director who uses only one of his names can be trusted. Except for Tarsem, whose only credit has been "The Cell," but there's a loophole on that. I've seen Tarsem use his whole name before. That could count, I guess, as one of "The Cell"'s twists. "Catwoman," though, only has one surprising thing about it. Watching it, you would never in a million years guess that Halle Berry once won an Oscar, and you would never think that she could on her way to winning an Oscar in the upcoming years.

I know that sounds incredibly mean. That's because it is mean. This movie shoved me first, so I'm shoving it back. Truth be told, it is not Halle Berry's fault. This plot, this script, this everything, is so bad that you could put Tellulah Bankhead the title role, and the performance would come out just the same. It would be a little more wrong, but you get my point.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I knew I could not be expecting much. All of my friends are avid comic book readers. I personally am not, but if something is morally wrong with a comic book movie, I will definitely know about it due to several 2am trips to the local coffee shop to discuss. In this case, the local bar. The first trailer showed a pre-Catwoman Halle Berry with a southern accent. I kid you not, that's what it showed. I wanted to cough up a hairball after I witnessed that atrocity. That particular trailer was recalled, scenes were re-shot, Halle is now without an accent, yet she still goes up to the bar and orders milk before clawing some victims.

The story of the film starts out with Patience Phillips (Halle) who is an artist and works for ad agency as one of their designers. The heads of this company include Georges and his wife Laurel Hedare (Lambert Wilson and Sharon Stone). Guess who the chief villains turn out to be? No, it's not Alex Borstein as Patience's all too nice, all too comic relief friend. What the hell is that character doing here anyway? Shouldn't she be off doing more voice work for "Family Guy" or anything that's, you know, good. Lambert Wilson is one of those characters who yell at nearly everything that displeases him. You almost expect him to get a paper cut, then order for the rainforest to be burnt to the ground. He is like he's trying to be a cross between Christopher Walken from “Batman Returns,” James Spader from "Secretary," but he comes more across as James Spader in "Mannequin."

As it turns out, this company has developed a new facial cream which will make you stay young for a great period of time. That is until you stop using it. Once that happens, you turn into Freddy Krueger, except you can't screw with people in their dreams, which is kind of a bummer. Patience accidentally stumbles upon the secret to this cream, and the guards start chasing her. She gets flushed through some water pipes and spit out into a pond of waste. Patience is dead from...being flushed, I guess. It kills fish, so why not a human being.

She lies dead on the ground, somehow floats to the shore, where she is approached by dozens upon dozens of cats all led by the best character in the whole movie: an ancient Egyptian cat named Midnight. Not only is this is a cool cat, people, but he's like Agent Smith from "The Matrix Revolutions," meaning he's the only character who acts like he’s a damn human! This is a cat who, to test Patience pre-Catwoman, he hops out on a ledge on the side of an apartment building to see if Patience will risk her life to rescue him. She does, proving that she would make a great Catwoman. I guess Midnight had a hunch she would one day get flushed down some pipes and die.

After a visit from a mystical cat lady (more Whoopi from "Ghost," less Mrs. Deagle from "Gremlins"), she learns that Catwomen are a magical thing and have existed all over the country since the dawn of time. Oddly she leaves out Catwomen who have tried taking over the world and have blown up convenience stores. Now Patience returns as Catwoman. She crawls her way around rooms, climbs up walls, gives herself a bath with her hands, hisses, and purrs. Oh yeah, and she also can leap off tall buildings and land on her feet...just like a cat. She starts fighting off some robbers, before ultimately deciding to take vengeance against those who tried to kill her. See, now this is where the movie loses me, not that it ever really had me, but Patience is now sexier, smarter, she can leap from building to building, possibly kick the crap out of Laura Croft (but not Michelle Pfiefer), she also has self confidence, self esteem, and thinks of herself as a better person. Why take out vengeance to these people? I can understand that these are some bad people, but thinking about it, that's sort of like someone hitting me in the back of the head with a hemmer, but it makes me sexier and gives my a 13 inch dick. Would I want to extract revenge against the ones who did this to me? Hell no, I'd take them out and buy them a beer.

Another problem I had is that the Sharon Stone is just way to damn likeable and sympathetic in this role for me to root for Catwoman instead of her. Catwoman in this film is someone who walks around like a super hero version of "Lady Cocoa" or "Velvet Smooth" (take your pick.) She utters horrendous lines like "cat got your tongue," “like my nails, I just had them done," "give me a white russian, no ice, hold the khalua and the vodka," and the dreadful "my bad" on more than one occasion. This here Catwoman isn’t a superhero. She's a dream sequence from the WB network. Now, look at Sharon Stone. She is a character who has a little bit of a dimension to her role. She has become humiliated and depressed that her company is simply throwing her away as their top model since she has come over the age of 40. You really see the sadness and jealousy in her eyes once this happens. All that she has is that scumbag of a husband who openly cheats on her.

Sure, the facial cream is a pretty psychotic idea, but when it's being used, it turns your skin into a sort of marble that is like a shield over your face making you bullet proof. Now that's a pretty damn good idea. Bulletproof cream. Just take out the part where it burns your skin when you stop using it, and you got something my friends. Now that is why I was rooting for Sharon Stone instead of Halle Berry. Plus, Stone seems to be more at home and actually having fun with her campy performance, while Berry seems to think she's reaching for another Oscar by hanging on a ledge and purring.

Then there's the obvious love interest, a character so stupid, so inept, and completely lacking with anything resembling a brain; that it's a little hard for me to totally get into this whole subplot. He's a cop played by Benjamin Bratt. Now, I dig Bratt. I think he is a badass actor, and I can't wait till he finds a movie to truly express that. Here though, he has lost a bar bet with his agent, and is playing a man who fights with Catwoman while she scratches his face, licks his cheek, meows all over him, and leaps all the way across a stage to her escape. Bratt later has a date with Patience. On this date, she eats sushi so quickly that if you blinked, half of it would be gone. During an off camera sex scene, she scratches his back, and also Catwoman looks like Patience except with that ridiculous hat that looks like it was salvaged from a box of Mousketeer props. All of this evidence, and Bratt still doesn't know that Patience and Catwoman are one in the same. And don't even get me started on the Ferris Wheel of death scene. If it had Eddie Deezen and the dummy from "1941" on it, they would have had some great comedy, but this one has Berry climbing down the wheel to rescue a falling kid while Bratt picks at the engine. What did that have to do with anything? Time filler, my friends.

That whole love situation doesn't even have any sort of logical payoff, by the way. It has one of those open endings like they would expect the film to become some sort of huge franchise, and that it would pick up in the next film, and continue on through to the next one after that. Well, "Catwoman" tanked at the box office. I guess we're supposed to think for ourselves what could have happened between Patience Phillips and Det. Tom Lone without thinking of its ending as a "Spiderman" rip off.

The movie almost makes me sad that we live in an era where special effects have to be used for even the littlest of things. Halle Berry crawling down the steps: CG. Halle Berry walking around the roof of a building: CG. A cat meowing: CG. I'm dead serious on that one. Are we so lazy and flashy in our film making that the use of computer generated effects needed to be used for a cat to meow. They don't just use the effect for the mouth. They use it for the whole cat. And it's just one scene. The rest of the cat scenes are a real cat. And he meows then too, but for real. I'm pulling my hair right now. Why did those special effects need to be used to show a cat meowing?? I am really starting to hate CG. I'm starting to miss the special effects days of "An American Werewolf in London," but as far as "Catwoman" goes, I just have some other questions:

Where does she go to the bathroom? It never shows this. Does she use a litter box? And if she bathes by using her saliva, you would thing she wouldn't smell too nice on her date with Benjamin Bratt. He doesn't seem to mind though. I'm going to go watch "Batman Returns" right now. That movie showed a real psychological impact on going from a human to a human becoming like a cat. Then I'll watch Paul Schrader's "Cat People" which looks at the cat-like psychology from a sexual point of view. Then maybe I'll watch "The Crow" because this movie rips off its tagline (just replace "crow" with "cat"). All of these viewings will remind me not only how useless "Catwoman" is, but how it is wasted potential. It slaps the faces of those who have known the character of Catwoman since their childhood. If the real Catwoman wanted some personal vengeance, she'd soon enough just blow up the whole damn building, have it done with right then and there, then go on steal some fine jewelry to make herself even more puuuurfect. In this movie, she steals the jewelry, but then returns it with an apology note.

Those other movies, those questions, those grossly negative feelings I have will also remind me of one other thing. I will never, not in a million years, even if I die and my siamese cat resurrects me, ever watch "Catwoman" again.


Recommended: No