Catwoman English Movie
Let's face it. In terms of quality, Hollywood and Bollywood are almost identical twins. Ninety percent of what comes out of the US is outright kitsch. "Catwoman" is certainly part of that brigade of films that you needn't hold your breath for, unless it is to avoid the stink.
At this point of time when "Spider-Man" has returned with such gravity-defying intensity, who needs a female version of the same story?
"Catwoman" strikes you as a very poor feline version of her spidery kin. The plot, basic as it ought to be, is too ridiculous to register as anything but hokum.
To the viewer sitting in a darkened theatre, "Catwoman" is like champagne without the bubbles. It tries to sweep you into to its cat-and-mouse chase, replete with skidding cars and screeching guns. But at the end of it you feel cheated.
Perhaps the mood in which the story is told has something to do with it. Even "Spider-Man 2" had its share of childlike fantasies. But there's a difference between nurturing a fantasy and subverting it to the point that it becomes an outrageous travesty of life's most valuable aesthetics.
"Catwoman" is guilty of doing just that. The gothic cinematography catches the heat of the moment but misses the larger climate of the plot. We see Halle Berry cut across the ominous skyline. But there's no elation or even basic joy in the flight. Bravery is substituted by bravura and ecstasy by chic thrills. At the end of the fly-by-night adventure we are left feeling extremely annoyed... and sorry. Might as well have watched "Spider-Man" one more time.
Director Pitof, who specialises in special effects, does nothing special this time. He renders the tale of a mousy woman's transformation into a catty spectacle with furious concentration but with little understanding of desolation and defiance -- the two characteristics that facilitate the changeover from Clark Kent/Peter Parker to Superman/Spiderman.
What we see in "Catwoman" is what we don't get. Why the hell did Pitof make what's at best a vacuous and voluptuous version of "Spider-Man"? It beats me as to who the audience for this film is meant to be. Kids? Nah! A female flying-saviour is just not exciting enough, especially when Halle Berry plays Catwoman like a caricature rather than a real person.
Check her out in the sequence where she prances all over her bedroom in feline fashion while speaking to her best friend, who incidentally gives a far better performance than Berry even without the cat suit. But then the poor best friend is packed off to a hospital for a series of tests.
Maybe she has been watching too many medical soaps at home to get away from the comic-book adaptations that have flooded Hollywood in the past few years.
The love interest is even more vapid. Berry and Benjamin Bratt (playing a cop who suspects Patience to be the Catwoman) cook up as much heat as a nun and a monk in a monastery.
Clearly the focus of interest is the confrontation that builds up with painful deliberation between Catwoman Berry and cosmetics tycoon Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone). If nothing else you expect the two actresses to look sexy on screen. Alas, the stunning Ms Stone grits her teeth and narrows her eyes to look evil. She seems to model her appearance on singer Annie Lennox rather than the infamous evil women of Hollywood.
Remember how Kim Basinger smouldered as the vamp in "L.A. Confidential"? Sharon Stone's wry smile and dry-lipped humour simply creates a character who you'd rather not run into. In her sequences with her stoic and evil husband Georges (Lambert Wilson), the two clatter in the cluttered scenario like sophisticated skeletons fighting for space in the same cupboard.
As for Berry, what happened to the no-holds-barred working girl's trauma that she portrayed in "Monster's Ball"? After "Gothika" she comes up with another downer. Not her fault, really. The director seems to have slept on the job. No wonder the aerial hi jinks of "Catwoman"
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