Catwoman [2004]
I felt kind of dirty even putting that 'DC Comics' tag on this post, but I guess I'm obliged to, since this is technically a movie based on a DC comics property?
I'm not someone who needs all my superhero characters' live-action adaptations to be 100% faithful to the comics. In fact, a lot of characters are actually improved when live-action adaptations tone down some of the dorkier aspects of a character's comic-book background, or retool them in the service of the main character of the movie.
2004's Catwoman, starring Halle Berry, is not one of those good adaptations.
You know what's a good adaptation that deviates from its inspiration? The Catwoman that this movie is undoubtedly channeling -- Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in 1992's Batman Returns, where there's something almost mystical with Selina Kyle's origin story in that movie, where she was portrayed as being slightly mentally unstable, before falling off a roof and seemingly 'resurrected' after a bunch of cats surrounded her.
Well, that cat scene, plus the backstory of 'working for a boss' as well as being 'sexy' and 'using a whip' as a weapon seems to be all that the designers of this movie cared about when they did this movie. Catwoman is not only reinvented as "Patience Phillips", but she also gains her powers from... poorly-explained magic powers of cats. And I've seen enough weird comic-book origins to not think of that as being too weird. But a combination of the fact that the movie doesn't even take that concept too far, and the fact that everything else around the movie is so otherwise mundane feels like this is a parody. A parody that puts Catwoman in the most stripper-esque outfit possible, and then focuses on long lingering shots that makes me roll my eyes. This movie is a great example of trying 'too hard to be sexy' and ending up with something that's just embarrassing.
I know we just reviewed the similarly-not-that-well-regarded Elektra recently, but as dire as that movie's attempt to reinvent the mythos around the character is, that movie is at least a passable attempt at an adaptation. I try to think about all the worst superhero adaptations out there -- Inhumans, Suicide Squad, Man of Steel, Batman and Robin, Morbius -- and there's at least some attempt of adapting the source material. This one just feels like someone spent ten seconds googling someone's cliff's notes on what the Catwoman character is, then writing a whole script about it.
And it's not even a good story, if we're taking this as "it's own thing". The plot of the movie itself is absolutely insipid, with Patience being straight-up killed after she stumbles upon the nefarious plot of... of side effects in beauty cream product. Because of course a movie about women has to be about beauty products, right? Patience nearly gets killed, gets resurrected with cat powers and some cat-psychosis, and then we find out that... uh... the beauty cream product gives people headaches (if Patience's over-the-top-thirsty friend is anything to go by) and causes its users to become sick.
Except when it doesn't, because the main villain Laurel ends up lathering herself in so much of it that she gets "skin of marble". Which... is kind of stupid that they're trying to get this out as a mass product when it can apparently cause someone to become basically a superhuman. And let's not mention that the villains' big major plot is... to launch the product. For the good of the company. Except the product literally causes skin disintegration if you 'get addicted' to using it. It's so stupid, and when you consider that this plot point is probably chosen because the writer thought that a plot that isn't related to stereotypically 'girly' interests wouldn't appeal to the women in the audience, it gets stupid and offensive.
Honestly, the more I try to describe the plot revolving around Beau-Line, the more insipid it gets. You really know you have a banger of a plot on your hands when parody movies like, oh, Austin Powers or something have a more sensible plot than this.
There's a lot of utterly insipid storylines too -- which maybe in the hands of a better director and writer might at least be decent. Patience gets some 'character development'... which amounts to her going from a meek-mild-mannered woman to... a lunatic that can't control her impulses and gorges herself on sushi? It's like they took Pfeiffer's Catwoman's increase in confidence and then cranks it up to eleven, not realizing the difference between 'sexily confident' and 'crazy'. There's a very generic and utterly forgettable romantic plot with the token love interest police guy, there's some investigation about secret identities with police guy, there's a convoluted storyline to make Catwoman look like a villain in the public's eyes that is so stupid that Golden Age comics look sane in comparison... and generally just terrible attempts to address sexism that people smarter than me have dissected online.
Not to mention that they expanded the 'Catwoman wakes up and reinvents herself after being surrounded by cats' in Batman Returns into something utterly bizarre and unexplained, and any attempts to be 'mystical' to explain this just makes the plot even more stupid. Because apparently Patience is the latest in a long line of "Catwomen" empowered by magical Egyptian cats that apparently "knows a freedom other women never will"... which... uh... yeah, you need freedom granted to you by cat gods to yell at your boss, go all kleptomania over jewelry, excel at basketball, go ga-ga over catnip and gorge yourself on sardines. There's nearly no dignity or self-control with Patience's terrible attempt at showing "empowerment" -- which is treated something more akin to terribly-written split personality, which, I assume, is something that the writers probably intended except that the writing is so muddled that there really isn't any sort of resolution to Patience's character at all.
Speaking of stupid plot lines, let me single out the stupid scene of Police Love Interest Guy's friend babbling some psychoanalysis about Catwoman and Patience's handwriting. I'm not sure if this is more stupid than the whole "we need to kill whoever listened to the fact that our beauty products will have severe side effects!"
What about action scenes? Action scenes at least made movies like Blade Trinity or the Resident Evil movies watchable, right? The CGI is probably already dodgy for 2004, and it definitely gets worse now. The final battle and that nonsensical basketball scene are also pretty damn chaotic -- I'm not someone who cares about good scene transitions or whatever, but god damn that final battle had some utterly nonsensical jump cuts.
What about hammy, narm-y dialogue, though? I gain enjoyment from that from movies like Batman and Robin or Batman Forever or the Roger Moore Bond movies... but nope. Where someone like Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze might own it with his extremely iconic and so-bad-it's-good puns, the scripting and delivery of the lines here are just... just lame. I guess evil husband CEO guy and the crazy cat lady was kinda fun hamming it up, but nowhere enough to salvage this movie.
Halle Berry, who plays Patience/Catwoman, tries her best, at least, but... but I've seen her in other things. The first X-Men movie was four years before this, and she was cool there as Storm. And, credit where credit's due, she at least looked natural when she was playing the pre-Catwoman Patience? But afterwards, the rest of the movie, we're kind of following around a protagonist who's as confused as the movie's own haphazard plotline.
So yeah. There are several contenders for 'absolute worst superhero movie of all time'. I'm not sure this movie qualifies, because I'm not even sure if this qualifies as a proper adaptation of DC comics' Catwoman. At least this movie was good for one thing; I definitely appreciate other poorly-made movies better now that this movie has lowered the bar of how bad it can go.
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