Catwoman
Catwoman (2004)
This review will contain spoilers
Alright so Halle Berry, Academy Award winning actress Halle Berry, plays Patience Phillips a mousy nerdy woman who works in the art department of a big beauty product company run by not James Bond and Beaver Woman from Basic Instinct. How do we know that Patience is mousy and nerdy you ask? She wears three layers of clothing, constantly holds her sleeves and bumps into every object in a five mile ratio I feel confident in saying the role was written for Sandra Bullock. So not George Lazenby is the head of the company along with Basic Beaver who is the "face of the company". The plot trudges along as we learn that the Beav is being replaced by a much younger version who not Roger Moore is banging. The company is getting ready to release a revolutionary new skin cream that not only covers up wrinkles but eliminates them altogether and of course Patience best gal pal, Lois Griffin, is using this product and is having mysterious headaches.
So Cloud Atlas is at home painting a giant flower when she sees a cat on a ledge of her apartment building, she decides that the wise course of action is to climb onto the ledge and onto a wobbly broke ass AC unit to try to reach the cat, driving down the street at this moment is Benjamin Bratt, who I believe is cleverly being played by a cardboard cutout, spies her and assumes she is a suicide jumper. Benny Bratt rushes up to her apartment and snatches her off the ledge as the cat disappears back into her apartment. Is that a crammed in out of place love story I smell or does the litter box need changing? Oh it's the love story.
So Storm has to get the ad for the new cream turned in by midnight but no carrier can carry it because of well you know plot convenience. Now we already saw that the main office and board rooms are in the building with Patience so where do the ads need to go? Why they have to go out to the chemical factory on an its own island just off the city of course. So Swordfish wonders into the basement of the factory and hears some conspiring, apparently not only is the new cream addictive and causing headaches it also has some more nefarious side effects if you stop using it your skin melts off. The creator of the cream can handle some evil but full on face melting is a line he refuses to cross. It's at this point that Monster Ball knocks some stuff off a table and is discovered, security guards chase and shoot at her and she hides inside a gigantic pipe that I am sure will lead her to the mushroom kingdom if she takes the first right, well unfortunately we never get the chance to find out because they flush sewage through the pipes and drowned her. Gothika washes up on a beach and is surrounded by a bunch of cgi cats. The cat she tried to rescue earlier, an egyptian mau, jumps on her chest and breathes a green mist into her face she awakens and her eyes slit horizontally like a cat's as she gets cat vision which lets her see a bird up close, a spider up close and other such bizarre close ups.
BAPS wakes up the next morning with no memory of the previous day's events. She goes to work and when not Sean Connery yells at her she yells back in a "remix" and then immediately apologizes. That night the neighbor across the street continues to host a bar inside his apartment because you know that happens and Boomerang decides enough is enough she needs her cat naps and she kicks in the door, flips up on the wet bar and hoses down the speakers with beer then uses the hose as a whip. She then proceeds back to her apartment where she gets her date emergency outfit her dumbass horny friend got her that is a leather zipsuit and then using two scissors CUTS HER OWN HAIR! Let me repeat that SHE USES TWO PAIRS OF SCISSORS SIMULTANEOUSLY TO CUT HER OWN FUCKING HAIR! She then dyes part of it blonde and heads off on a stolen motorcycle to rob a jewelry store. When she gets there it is already being robbed, finally something that feels like Catwoman, I wonder how she will handle this situation. Oh by climbing up the wall, of course because every one knows cats can scale the sides of buildings by jumping up them vertically. Once inside Halle gives one of the three enjoyable parts of the film, she surveys the robbers and says it's the Purrrrfect plan really relishing the roll of the r's the way that Eartha Kitt did in the later episodes of Adam West's Batman series and Eartha Kitt to me is as sexy as it gets when it comes to Catwoman. Then poorly CGI'd Halle bounces around the room taking out the would be robbers in one of the worst looking fights in history of crap cinema. Kitty leaves with the jewels and the robbers are found by the cops including Bratt pack. They find the jewels in a paper sack with "Sorry" scrawled on it sitting in the lobby.
Back at the police station Benny notices the similarity between Catwoman's sorry and the sorry written on a coffee cup that Bulworth gave him to make up missing their date, you know on account of being slightly dead. Despite the writing being exactly the same he still takes it to the lab where the analyst says it is the same except one is written by a sad lonely woman and the other by a woman who doesn't play by the rules, feeling relieved that his girlfriend is a sad manic depressive he heads out.
Cut to a two story house in the middle of city surrounded by skyscrapers we meet Ophelia Powers, get it aren't the 28 writers who came up with that name clever? Ophelia is a disgruntled ex-professor who is bitter because she was denied tenure after 20 years because it's a man's world, now call me crazy but it seems that in the last 30 years or so academia has become heavier in women than men. Ophelia tells not cgi Halle that there have always been Catwomen who always live outside of society's rules. Among the pictures of Catwomen is Michelle Pheifer meaning this takes place in the same universe as Tim Burton's Batman films. In the second of the three great moments in this 104 minute deluge of diarrhea comes as Ophelia tosses a ball of catnip to the Shame of the Academy and she proceeds to rub it all over her face, if you have ever seen a porn, and if you read me you probably have, it looks like the scene where the girl rubs a cock all over her face and mouth as she orgasims. There is even a cum shot of sorts as bits of catnip is stuck to her face as she puts the ball away. Feeling confused and ashamed Die Another Day rushes off.
Cut to an elementary school where Brattsy is talking to a classroom of kids giving some facsimile of an inspirational speech which amounted to, hey don't be a bad guy now lets go play basketball. Our Feline Female challanges him to a one on one on the playground where all they do is play keep away and NO ONE TRIES TO SHOOT A BASKET! The camera lingers on Halle's not CGId ass, which I am not complaining about, as she proceeds to dry hump him on the court...in front of the kids.
I am officially out of clever names for Halle Berry because surprise surprise she hasn't done a lot of films since Catwoman.
So move to a night club where Kitty is after one of the guards from the chemical plant. She sashays into the club and orders a white russian hold the ice, khola and vodka, the result cream straight up, she licks it up and it dribbles down her face. Taking to the stage she cats around with a gyrating striptease which is the last best part of this movie. She leaps on the guard and gets the information she needed.
There are a few unimportant scenes and we end up at a crappy looking Cirque du Soleil with people riding up and down randomly. In a balcony sits not Pierce Bronson with his young new model, Garfield (so I do have some more names for Halle Berry Huzzah) pounces on him and scratches his face. The police burst in on her and she dives to the stage Booth style and is chased backstage by Benjamin Bratt. The chase goes all over with plenty of bad lines and worse CGI. Felix disarms Bratt and licks then kisses him all in all I'd say Benjamin Bratt signed up for a good role in a really bad moving picture, sure the character is ineffective, wimpy, emasculated and given terrible lines but he does get licked by a very sexy kitty. The cat gets out of the bag.
Benjamin Bratt sleeps with Fritz and after stepping on one of Catwoman's diamond fingernails, I guess she didn't feel that sorry about the jewelry robbery, Benji takes one of her drinking glasses back to the lab for comparison to the lipstick kiss left on his cheek by Kittenwoman. Meanwhile she gets a call from the Beaves telling her she can turn over evidence of not Daniel Craig's wrong doing, Halle shows up to the mansion to find Not Shaken or Stirred lying dead on the floor and a frame up in the works revealing old Icepick herself to be the true mastermind.
Pussy Galore is arrested and locked in a cell, she tells true Blandjamin Bratt the truth of the conspiracy and he runs off to make the arrest. Halle slips between the bars of her cell and makes her escape, here I have a big problem. They have spent the past hour showing us multiple closeups and tracking shots of Halle's Juicy Assets and there is no way in hell that they would fit between the bars of a prison cell. Kitty makes it in time to save her dude in distress and get in the final fight with Total Recall.
Now Casino's skin has been turned to stone from prolonged use of the product, she can't fight worth shit but much like Homer Simpson her body can take a ton of abuse. The fight consists of CGI Cat bouncing around taking swipes at marble headed Stone. It contains one of the worst dialogue exchanges in action film history. Halle is about to fall out of a window and is holding onto a window frame Stone says "It's game over" to which Berry replies "Looks like we're going into overtime" not only is the line clunky it makes no sense in the context of the scene or story. Anyway spoiler alert the hero wins and the villian ends up flat on the ground falling out of the same window. Post fight bullshit scenes where we see what became of the different charaters, because they thought we would care which we don't, but hey her gal pal ends up with a hot doctor and she leaves Benji with a note saying she is going to prowl the alleys as Catwoman because she's not bound by our society, that "some times she is good and is oh so good and some times she is bad but not too bad." Cue more terrible CGI and roll credits.
So how did I really feel about it?
It should be mentioned that this festival of feculence was nominated for and one every major Razzie category that year, worse picture, worse director, worse script, worse effects and of course worse actress. Halle Berry showed up to accept her Razzie like a good sport carrying her Oscar on stage with her. I leave you with her speech.
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