Berry plays Patience Phillips, a homely graphic designer who wears the same clothes every day so we get that she is homely. Patience is quiet and good at her job but gets pushed around a lot. Her boss (Wilson) and his wife (Stone) are tremendous pricks who run the cosmetics company she works for and if an important deadline isn’t met she will be sacked. Why? Because it’s a business and deadlines are common things? No, because the man has to keep the woman down. She has to deliver her work to a remote factory late at night (huh?) and is dispatched after seeing something she shouldn’t have. Talk about a bad life.

Lucky for her some CGI kitties manage to unsink and breathe new life into her (in a similar way to Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle in Batman Returns). The changes in her are evident immediately as she awakes in makeup and new clothes! Detective Lone (Bratt) meets her during these strange times in her life (in between the classes he teaches to children of every color, shapes, sizes - huh?) and tries to get to know her and help out the best he can, because isn’t it obvious, he’s a nice guy?! I am all for empowering women, but with such simplistic good and evil characters and a main character that goes from plain Jane with no respect to getting a sexy makeover and receiving lots power of respect (and jewelry), what are you trying to say here?

Catwoman was passed between many writers, which may be the reason why there are so many loose ends (the necklace, the best friend getting the doctor) and inconsistencies. The leads can’t seem to decide whether to play their characters serious (Bratt, Berry half of the time) or to camp it up (Stone, Berry half of the time). I am guessing that director Pitof focused too much on attention on swooping camera moves (there’s one in front of every scene) and less on his actors. However, the cinematography and overall style are my favorite parts of the film. Pitof has talent, but it’s overdone and lost here among all the CGI. Welcome to Hollywood! The rare real fights between Berry’s stuntwomen and the bad guys are fun to watch, but they last only a few seconds before she has to pounce onto a wall and go into videogame mode. Is Catwoman bad? Yes. Is it the worst movie of this summer? Nope, Van Helsing has that prize.

I saw this film at Cinemark’s Tinseltown 17 Theatres on Peach Street in Erie, PA.

(04-0801)