Across the Atlantic, the reviewing fraternity have greeted Catwoman with the kind of welcome normally reserved for the Ebola virus or J-Lo, and every conceivable lazy feline pun has been duly trotted out (readers of a more sensitive nature should be advised to skip the remainder of this paragraph). Hence ‘catnip’, ‘hocked-up fur-ball’, ‘pass the kitty litter tray’, ‘catcalls’, and my personal favourite, ‘purr-fectly awful’ have all made it to print. No wonder Catwoman has rolled over and died at the US box-office.
Alas, that almost constitutes a tragedy. Sure, Catwoman is a mangy, fang-less beast of a movie, but it has the good grace to be both enjoyably bad and unmissably kitsch. It’s no Showgirls, you understand, but it’s getting there.
Dispensing almost entirely with Bob Kane’s creation, French visual effects maestro Pitof (I sincerely hope his parents are Mr and Mrs. Despair, lest they miss out on some seriously pretentious Gallic gloom) gives us somebody called Patience Philips (Berry), an advertising minion who stumbles on a nefarious plot by her ridiculously evil employer (Stone) to poison women using a moisturising cream. Depending on which scene you happen to be watching, this potent potion will addict and/or deform and/or give bionic powers to all who use it.
Luckily, after our Halle is bumped off to keep her quiet, there’s an ancient Egyptian cat (a creature only slightly less realistic looking than a sock puppet with whiskers) on hand to resurrect our heroine, and transform her into Catwoman, a crime-fighting whirlwind equipped with whips, chains, leather-look push-up bra and a predilection for sushi. So, the script may be lousy, the romantic subplot with Benjamin Bratt (playing a cop who is apparently investigating every crime committed in the entire city) may well be lame, the cat gags may be run into the ground, but it should be stressed that Catwoman does have Halle Berry dressed as a dominatrix prowling around on all fours for an hour-and-a-half. Are you sold, yet?
Tight PVC raiment aside, Halle Berry is undoubtedly a succulent creature, but she certainly doesn’t ooze the quality that say, Michelle Pfieffer or Julie Newmar had down to a purr. They played the fetishised feline with the slinky threat of leaving scratch-marks, Arabian strap indentations and a gait in your step for days. And that would just be from the foreplay.
Berry, on the other hand, is much less coy than her predecessors, investing the role with rare camp abandon and rubbish acting. Sharon Stone, a proper Sharon’s Sharon of a gal, is also delightfully dreadful, and her delivery of the immortal line, “I’m a woman. I’m used to doing all kinds of things I don’t want to”, carries the distinction of being simultaneously hysterical and wooden. Then again, we’d expect nothing less from one so eminently qualified for bad pussy flicks.
And no, that’s not a cat pun. Honest.