Welcome to part 5 of my look at the Batman theatrical releases. If this is the first article of my retrospective please read the other parts before continuing. Today we take a look at the most unnecessary addition to the Burton/Schumacher franchise of them all, Catwoman (ok, Batman and Robin beats it there too but let's continue).
Before I get onto the history of this terrible film I would like to address something that happened in the comment section of my Batman Returns review. In this review I made a comment that Catwoman had powers but I barely counted this as a negative since the point was mostly ignored. What a commenter pointed out to me was that Burton actually never intended his Catwoman had superpowers and that all the instances of powers had logical excuses. For example the instance of the cats bringing her to life after the fall was simply the cats waking her up from a fall she survived from (thanks to the awnings). He also pointed out that the incident involving 9 lives at the end was actually explained in a graphic novel of the book which says that Max was a terrible shot and her martial arts skills were explained thoroughly in an early draft of the script.
Now I admire this commenter for his impressive amount of knowledge on the subject but I must point out that even though Burton's intentions were to have a Catwoman without powers, the movie Catwoman (set after the events of the Batman series) officially confirms in cannon that the Pfieffer Catwoman as well as the Catwoman introduced in this movie have cat powers thanks to cats bringing our heroine back to life. This doesn't mean we should dislike Batman Returns at all but instead means we should hate the movie Catwoman with a burning passion. But aside from some liberies with the source material does it still hold up? No, but let's take a look anyway.
HISTORY
With the negative reception of Batman Returns, Burton was booted off the franchise before the third installment could be filmed. However thanks to the popularity of his interpretation of Catwoman he was allowed to work on a spin off of our favorite femme fatale with Michelle Pfieffer reprising her role. This was to explain Catwoman's absense in Batman Forever since while the events of that movie were going on Catwoman was on her own adventure. In a sense this would have been the third Tim Burton Batman movie which is something we desperately needed instead of the Schumacher films.
However thanks to studio interference the movie went into development hell. Numerous rewrites and scheduling conflicts came up to the point where both Burton and Pfieffer left the project. After several years went by eventually a script was rushed out, Halle Berry was set to star and it got a director in the form of Pitof (seriously that's his whole name as listed in the credits) and was finally released in 2004. Now let's see just how much "Pitof" ruined such a great character.
1) THE PLOT
Despite this movie claiming to be based off of the character of Catwoman (who in every interpretation was named Selina Kyle) this movie follows Patience Phillips, a nerdy office worker who learns about a scheme her bosses are doing and is killed for knowing too much. She's brought back to life thanks to magic cat breath (I wish I was making this up) and is given special cat powers so she can exact revenge while stopping their evil plans.
Not only is this story horribly written and terribly paced it also makes the decision of changing the main character pointless since her story is virtually identical Selina Kyle's in Batman Returns. Unlike in Batman Returns the plan of the villains makes no sense. In Returns Selina is killed because she discovers inconsistancies in her boss's reports that could have lead back to murders he performed. Here it's because Patience discovers that a beauty product they were selling had side effects that caused their product to deform people who used it enough yet they were still selling it. granted this is probably still illegal but it seems more like a bad business decision than really that evil since eventually the police will find out their product is doing this to people meaning they'd get sued into the Stone Age and/or sent to jail. At the very least the company would lose money just from bad publicity it's bound to get on the news. Not to mention the big dilema of this movie has nothing to do with any lost lives but the fact that some women would look ugly if they keep using this product. Just saying since our hero is risking her life to solve a problem that would kill no one and only affect women dumb enough to keep using it it makes the whole conflict both sexist and boring. But enough about the plot. we have terrible actors to criticize.
2) THE HERO
In this movie we have Patience Phillips A.K.A. woman who thinks she's Catwoman played by Halle Berry. When I heard Halle Berry was staring I thought it would work pretty well. I'm one of those people who doesn't mind when they change the race of a character so an actor who fits the part can play the role and Halle's pretty talented. But man was she bad in this. Now as I mentioned before this "Catwoman" follows the same character archetype as Selina Kyle in Returns but instead of giving us a performance on par with Michelle Pfieffer she gives us a performance with about as much energy as Al Gore talking about Global Warming. She even openly admits to this day that her performance was terrible which is the only reason I don't completely ignore her movies now.
3) THE VILLAIN
For the villain we have Laurel Hedare played by Sharon Stone (sorry no Basic Instinct jokes in this review). The only good thing about this villain I can say is that the movie did a fairly good job of setting her up as the villain. You see she's not the owner of the company making the beauty product but the wife of the owner, who's played by that french guy from the Matrix sequels (I know he has an actual name but most people refer to him as that french guy from the Matrix sequels anyway). For a while the movie sets the owner up as the villain only for it to be revealed later that it was the wife who was behind it. Also it kinda worked how she operated behind the scenes even framing "Catwoman" for the murder of her husband. But aside from that this villain is very cliched. In fact I had to look up her character's name online even after watching the movie a few times, that's how forgettable she is. And not only that but her ultimate fate is the most sexist thing ever put on film since we never get to know anything about her character which means the only explanation we get for that moment is the fact that she's a woman (if you saw this movie you know what I'm talking about). So now let's move on to the most competent character in a superheroine movie, the love interest. Wait what...?
4) THE LOVE INTEREST
Yes believe it or not we have a love interest in this movie who's actually closer to being a hero than the superheroine (as if the movie couldn't get sexist enough). Enter Detective Tom Lone played by Benjamin Bratt. Not only does this guy save Patience at the first moment we see him, he later on takes on "Catwoman" in a fight (something Batman had trouble with) and later on arrests our heroine. I'm all for adding competence to the supporting cast, namely love interests, but the fact that this is when we see a superheroine origin story and she's taken out by the love interest is just insulting. Can you imagine if in the Amazing Spiderman they had Gwen Stacy punch Spiderman out? on top of that there's no chemistry between them. They only come together because they can smell the main-ness of each other's character.
5) SUPPORTING CAST
If you thought that the villain was forgettable wait until you see the supporting cast. In this movie we have the token best friend, the token red herring, token bully, token cops, and of course token thugs (this movie is in serious need of a Bob). The only character of note in the supporting cast is referred to as the "Catlady" but her only point is to explain that the cat powers came from an Egyptian goddess (and also confirms that Selina from Returns got her powers the same way). Again this cast is entirely forgettable.
6) FINAL VERDICT
This movie should be avoided like the plague. It offers no amount of entertainment even in terms of mocking it. All the changes made to the source material only served to make a great character significantly more generic (and of course anger us fanboys). In case you still feel that Ann Hathaway isn't suited for the role please remember this movie and keep in mind that it can't be any worse than this garbage.
So that's my thoughts on Catwoman. Click like if you liked it and comment below on your thoughts on the movie. Please check in later today as I review the first of Nolan's Batman movies titled Batman Begins.