July 22, 2004
Catwoman - Movie Review
A Purr-fect Setting For Clichéd Merriment
By Fred H. Arm
Imagine a beautiful and talented actress like Halle Berry cast as the timid, frumpy graphic artist Patience Phillips, whose curiosity ultimately gets her murdered by her evil boss. Restore her back to life by way of a mystical cat until she morphs into this super human hunk of gorgeousness who can leap enormous heights in the blink of an eye and voila, you have Catwoman, the new super heroine.
The thrust of the clichéd plot is that her evil boss, the tyrannical George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his icy supermodel wife, Laurel (Sharon Stone), have created this fantastic anti-aging beauty cream, albeit actually disfigures the user after a period of time, which they plan to unleash upon the public. Patience discovers the plot and is killed by the wicked henchmen of Laurel. A mystical feline and her furry friends restore patience back to the living whereupon she realizes that she has these amazing powers and strength.
Unfortunately, while fighting crime in her skin-tight, leather, slinky, sado-masochistic cat outfit, the world mistakenly believes she is actually the criminal. Now where have I heard that one before? Anyway, she becomes enamored with the local police detective, Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt) while she secretly leaps from building to building--higher, faster and with more agility than the fabled Spiderman. The underworld and the police now have a new nemesis in the form of an extraordinarily seductive crimefighter with the agility and special senses of a cat.
Do not expect too much in the way of acting, plot, or direction and you will have a lot of fun while the adrenaline pumps chaotically through your veins. Of course, there is also the visual feast of Ms Berry in leathers for the red-blooded American males in the audience and the women can fantasize and identify with her as a metaphor for freedom and release from the oppressiveness of a male-dominated society. Kids will delight with her romps amongst the skyscrapers of New York a la Spiderman and Superman. There is fun and excitement for everyone as long as you do not take the movie too seriously. For me Halle Berry is always worth the price of admission.