Catwoman
Dir. Pitof
July 19th, 2004
Superhero
Village Roadshow Pictures / Di Novi Pictures / Frantic Films
Maple Shade Films / Catwoman Films
Warner Bros. Pictures
United States of America
I know what you’re thinking. Akhenaten, why for the love of all that’s holy in this world would you ever waste your time watching what is widely considered by most critics and most people in general to be one of the worst films ever made? Well, the reason is because I simply enjoy it. I adore watching the worst schlock ever vomited up onto the silver screen, whether it was made 50 years ago or in the current year of our Lord, 2024. Catwoman, released in 2004 has become infamous ever since its initial release for being utterly terrible on just about every front. Lead actor Halle Berry notably received a Razzie Award for her performance in this movie and even showed up in person to receive it, going on to directly blame the film and its director Pitof for killing her career. But is it really as bad as all the internet critics say it is?
Yes, of course it fucking is.
THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD
(As if you care?)
Catwoman follows Patience Phillips (Halle Berry), an employee at a cosmetics company called Hedare Beauty, which is preparing to reveal a new skin cream called Beau-Line which claims to reverse the signs of aging. While trying to deliver a new ad design to her boss at the company’s R&D lab she overhears the company’s executives discussing the dangerous side effects of the product. When she is discovered she is chased out of the facility through a drainage pipe, causing her to wash up on shore and be visited by a mysterious magical cat that gifts her cat-like powers. From then on Patience is known as Catwoman and begins to investigate the effects of Beau-Line and stop Hedare Beauty from releasing the product.
From the get-go this story is absolute dogshit. It feels like the most childish attempt to write a feminine story from a man that I’ve ever encountered in media like this. Everything about this, from the fact that the main antagonist is a Maleficent-style executive of a beauty cream company who’s main objective is to stay young and beautiful forever, to Catwoman’s ridiculous dialogue, to the way that the female characters in this movie talk about men, to the sexual overtones, to the emphasis on “shopping”, this whole movie feels like an insult to the very concept of feminism. It’s offensive and gross to the senses, and I love every second of this horrible, horrible nightmare.
Halle Berry’s performance is completely terrible, but as many have pointed out before, it likely isn’t her fault. The director, Pitof, is French, and apparently didn’t speak much English, so there were intense communication problems on set that more than likely led to Berry trying and failing miserably to interpret whatever it was that Pitof wanted her to do. It doesn’t help that the dialogue in this piece is cringey as all hell. Every line oozes second hand embarrassment, and it’s so damned funny. Watching the actors desperately attempt to get through their dialogue with any sense of gravitas or realism is hilarious because none of them have any idea what they’re doing.
There are so many shots in this movie that are very ill-conceived, such as the scene in which Berry and Officer Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt) are playing basketball in an outdoor court. There’s a shot where Berry is just passing the ball back and forth between her hands with the biggest, stupidest grin on her face. It’s hilarious. Aside from that there are tons of weird shots depicting Catwoman performing parkour that do nothing but accentuate how terrible the CGI work is in this movie.
Speaking of, I mean, holy shit are the digital effects bad here. Every scene that involves Catwoman doing something superhuman, whether its climbing up the walls inside a building or performing parkour outside, has the actor transition into a digital model. Every time this happens it just looks awful, as if its an unfinished effect or something made for a PlayStation 2 cutscene. There are even scenes where the actual cats that appear in the film are made in CGI and they look so fake. The shot in which the mysterious Egyptian cat named Midnight gifts Patience her powers has a terrible shot where the camera zooms in close to Midnight’s body. I have no idea why the filmmakers would ever deign to do that since the cat looks awful in just about every way.
Where I will at least give the movie a bit of credit is in the realm of costume design, at least partially. The main outfit that Catwoman dons throughout most of this movie is sleek, stylish, sexy, and reminiscent of kink and BSDM fetish gear. It’s cool and plays into the tropes that have been associated with Catwoman since her earliest incarnations. That said, Michelle Pfeiffer this is not. Also, the same cannot be said for Patience’s everyday clothes, which look horrendously ugly, as if some child had picked out a bunch of random clothes from the thrift store and just gave them to his mom.
All this and I haven’t even really gotten into the offensiveness of this movie, from the insulting gay stereotype that works at Patience’s job to the insinuation that the only problems women face in the world revolve around make-up, skin care, and beauty. It’s a reinforcement of the anti-feminist notion that women may not have to be literally subservient to men, but their place in the world is still dependent on their perceived beauty and how men react to them. The fact that the villain of this movie’s entire motivation is to remain the top model at the beauty company she works for, even going so far as to sell poison to the public and commit homicide, is atrocious. It’s like it’s trying to be a movie for women while inherently insulting their demographic’s intelligence.
Does this movie suck? Oh yeah. It’s a complete and total dog turd of a movie. But did I have a great time watching it? Hell yeah, I did! This is a perfect movie to put on for you and a bunch of friends to get drunk and watch while riffing mercilessly on it. It’s a film that begs to be torn apart and denigrated and insulted at every angle. From the acting, to the cinematography, to the digital effects, to the script, to the directing, this is just an absolute travesty of a movie and I love it dearly.
Final Verdict: 2/10
Deeply Flawed
~ Akhenaten
Where Strides The Behemoth? 