Running Time: 104 min.
MPAA rating: PG-13
I have just watched the worst superhero movie ever made. “Catwoman” is so bad, it makes Sly Stallone’s “Judge Dredd” look like “Citizen Kane.”
Halle Berry stars as Patience Philips, a mousy graphic artist for a cosmetics company run by a sleazy foreign dude (Lambert Wilson) and his wife (Sharon Stone). Foreign Guy has dumped his aging wife as spokesmodel for the company in favor of his younger, prettier plaything.
But enough gossip, let’s get to the idiotic plot. The cosmetics company is about to release an anti-aging creme into the market. The creme works, but one of the drawbacks is that if the woman stops using it, her face will corrode. (As if looking younger weren’t enough motivation for a woman to continue to use the product.)
Patience overhears the plot one night and is murdered by Foreign Guy’s thugs and flushed through the sewer, where she washes up on a pile of junk. A spooky Egyptian cat creeps up to her lifeless body and breathes life into her, transforming Patience into Catwoman, a woman with all the powers and abilities of a feline.
Now imbued with these new powers, Catwoman becomes a jewel thief and superhero cuz I guess you can’t fight crime unless you have the proper bling-bling.
Crammed into all this lunacy is an unconvincing love story between Patience and a cop (Benjamin Bratt). Talk about no chemistry. These two go together like Brussels sprouts and peppermint schnapps.
The dialogue is horrible, the special effects are sub-par, and for a movie that’s only an hour and 45 minutes long, it takes nearly an hour to get Berry into her cat suit which is the only reason anyone wanted to see this movie in the first place. I mean, who are we kidding here? And the cat suit isn’t really that sexy.
The catfight at the end with Catwoman and Sharon Stone is just horrible. So, all you have here is one hour of boring, plodding nothing; and then some poorly executed action sequences and a flaccid fight at the end.
“Catwoman” is a hairball on the carpet of cinema history. Avoid it.
GRADE: F
(c) 2004 King Features Synd., Inc.