Catwoman film review

certificate_12A

CATWOMAN

Standing silhouetted against a full moon, Catwoman (Halle Berry) purrs, "Sometimes I'm good, but sometimes I'm bad." That may be so, but the same can't be said of the film that carries her name. Catwoman is bad pretty much the whole time. Her final words are "My journey begins," which, when written, were presumably meant as a teaser for a sequel, but any hope of developing a franchise look unlikely based on this dreary mess.

Catwoman is the alter ego of the self-proclaimed drudge Patience Phillips who is even described by her best friend Sally (Alex Borstein) as "fun deficient." It's a phrase equally suited to the film; along with 'inspiration deficient' and 'originality deficient'. With few comic books around that have not been looted for the cinema, the search for fresh material has prompted producers to turn to peripheral characters. There's generally a good reason why they are supporting roles. They usually lack the weight to sustain an entire story. That's certainly the case with Catwoman, which struggles both to establish an absorbing heroine or a decent plot.

Catwoman is hardly the most fearsome adversary. Even her nemesis, the ruthless cosmetic mogul Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone), dismisses her as "just a scared little girl playing dress up." It's the dressing up part that is key. With little else to justify its existence, the only conceivable reason Catwoman appears to have made it to the big screen is because it allows the gratuitous sexploitation of the delectable Halle Berry. When Patience makes her transition to Catwoman, she inherits a variety of recognizable feline traits including great agility, a propensity to sleep in unusual places and a liking for milk and tinned tuna. Evidently one less well-known idiosyncrasy of cats is to dress up in scanty leather outfits.

Patience's metamorphosis into Catwoman begins when, as a graphic designer at the cosmetic giant Hedare Beauty, she inadvertently discovers that one of the company's products has devastating side effects. Before she's able to tell anyone, Laurel has her killed. All of this comes shortly after Patience has an encounter with a mysterious cat. It's this same cat that reappears on Patience's corpse as it is resurrected as Catwoman. Having been given another life, she sets out to avenge her own death, taking on the dual role of Catwoman and Patience.