Originally posted by Mr. Salty
But a pretentious one-named French special effects dude who thinks he can direct an American action movie? Puh-leeze. That's where I'm aiming my contempt.

It's nice to see Halle getting all the Oscar-quality scripts after her big win

Originally posted by Giantrobo
Whatever. This movie might suck but even if it didn't you guys wouldn't "man up" and admit it....

Originally posted by scott shelton
Oh no, it's quite bad. I'll even wear a dress and say that if you need it.

Originally posted by Panda Phil
Hear that? It's the sound of knife sharpening over at Rottentomatoes.com.

This is gonna be fun.

KITTY LITTER
July 22, 2004 -- Apurr-fectly ridiculous and boring cat-astrophe, “Catwoman” more than lives up to the lethal advance buzz and — even with Halle Berry cavorting like a third-rate dominatrix — is about as sexy as a hairball. The credits claim this $90 million bomb is “based on characters created by Bob Kane,” but this version bears virtually no resemblance to the feline comic-book villain so memorably played by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s infinitely more entertaining “Batman Returns,” much less Catwoman’s TV incarnations by Eartha Kitt and Julie Newmar. Given the feeble script — attributed to four writers — and the
inept direction by a Frenchman who understandably resorts to the pseudonym of Pitof, it’s small wonder

that Warner Bros. divorced Catwoman from the Batman franchise, and Nicole Kidman wisely turned the role down. Instead of Batman’s Selina Kyle, Berry gets to play Patience Phillips, a meek, put-upon graphic artist who is verbally abused by her haughty cosmetics-company boss, Hedare (Lambert Wilson, essentially reprising his role from “The Matrix Reloaded”). She is also somehow unable to get a date, even though she is the most drop-dead gorgeous woman in the building. When she accidentally discovers that the second most drop-dead gorgeous woman in the building — Hedare’s supermodel wife and partner, Laurel (Sharon Stone) — is hiding the fact that the firm’s new beauty cream will actually disfigure women, poor Patience gets flushed into the river with a load of toxic waste (which can easily be confused with this movie). Brought back to life by an Egyptian cat named Midnight who imbues her with magical powers — and mentored by a mysterious professor (Frances Conroy of “Six Feet Under”) — Catwoman sets out to find her killers.

The apparently few fans of the trailers will be disappointed to learn that Patience doesn’t don her silly-

looking, strategically ripped catsuit until nearly an hour into this 91-minute movie, and we don’t see Catwoman a whole lot after that. The audience’s uh, patience, is tried by far too much footage of a lame, chemistry-free romance between Patience and Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt), a police detective who is too

dim even to suspect his new girlfriend is really the scantily clad Catwoman, even after Patience scampers

out of a malfunctioning Ferris wheel to rescue a little boy. This sequence is handled as clumsily as all of the



other action sequences, which have been severely edited in an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the fact that the computergenerated version of Catwoman looks nearly as phony as the real thing. Pitof (real name: Jean-

Christophe Comar), a visual- effects supervisor for Jean-Pierre Jeunet, borrows the supersatured color look his mentor used in “Amelie” and does offer some striking vistas of the Vancouver skyline (standing in for an unnamed American city). But he has absolutely no clue how to direct his actors. Unsure whether to play

it seriously or for camp value, Berry laps up cream, chows down tins of tuna, sniffs at catnip, hisses at

dogs and wields a whip. The overall effect suggests less female empowerment than an Oscar winner

who would endure almost any humiliation for a $12.5 million paycheck. Stone — who, with the help of a surgeon and/or special effects, looks younger here than she did in “Basic Instinct” 12 years ago — clearly realizes it’s all a crock. She steals what isn’t nailed down with a way, way, over-the-top performance as Laurel, who is furious with her husband for replacing her as the company’s “face” with his younger model girlfriend because she’s just turned 40. “Catwoman” is pretty well summed up by Hedare: “This is a disaster.

It’s a total bloody disaster.”