Catwoman

I promised myself I wasn't going to ask. I promised myself I wasn't going to care. I promised myself that I was just going to let it go, 'cause what did I know and what difference does it make anyway? ... and yet here I am, and I find myself asking ... Why did Catwoman suck?

Please feel free to skip this blog entry from here on out.

Why did Catwoman suck? I heard that it sucked. Everyone said they heard it sucked. Everyone joked about how it sucked. I assume it bombed. I assume it disappointed. Yet, I just watched it ... and it seemed okay. I mean, I'm not going to tout it as the next Citizen Kane or anything, but I enjoyed it. But supposedly, it sucked.

Maybe I just have no taste. Could be. On IMDB, it's got a user rating of three stars. Three! I skimmed through user reviews and they complained about things like stupid plot and Sharon Stone, who can't act ... Well, I kind of like the plot ... and I kind of like Sharon Stone ... in fact, I think she's great. But hey, everybody who's got an opinion and an asshole does movie reviews online these days, right? So, I bounced on over and skimmed the professional reviewers: Roger Ebert, Peter Travers from Rolling Stone, Salon.com, etc.. They said it sucked. One complained that Halle Berry was too much a sex kitten. (No pun intended.) Another complained that she wasn't sexy enough. But they pretty much all complained about the fast editing style.


Now, this last complaint is a little confusing to me. Catwoman is directed by a French director (Pitof), which makes sense, because the movie moves like a French action film. They cut a lot and move the camera a lot. Anyone who has seen Brotherhood of the Wolf knows this. Again -- bothered them, didn't bother me. So I did some more checking. You see, I recently watched The Bourne Supremacy with My Man Matt Damon. (Fun flick by the way. IMDB user rating in the "7's". Of course, SPOILER I was happy to see he still had the girlfriend from the previous movie only to have her get killed at the beginning. Action movie girlfriends just don't last.) This little flick featured a lot of hand held camera and was edited to within a second of its life. So I ran through the same reviewing suspects and no one had a nasty thing to say about that editing style. Peter Travers even crowed about Bourne being an example of "whiplash action". Hmmm ... puzzling.

Well, I'm rather stupid and reactionary about these things, so when confronted with such puzzles, I take the only reasonable road ... I contact someone even more stupid and reactionary than I. That meant getting in touch with my old movie review pal, J. Sherman. This is no small feat. Having done online movie reviews years ago, he has thrown himself into a deep and heavily enforced retirement. He moves around a lot, changes his name, dresses in funny wigs, you know. Fortunately, some years ago, while strolling through the trash outside of his apartment, I stumbled onto his credit card information and was able to set it up so that I receive duplicates of his bills. It was still rough going. Once I got the brothers at the monestery to accept the charges, then I had to convince them to go dig up Sherman and drag him to the phone. Finally, with Sherman reluctantly taking my call (and removing his latest funny wig so that he could hear me) I was able to ask him my questions. Had he seen Catwoman, and if so, why had it sucked?

I was not disappointed. Sherman -- brilliant, paranoid socio-phobe that he is -- suggested these reasons for Catwoman's suckage. Catwoman sucked because ... Warning! Spoilers! (But not really big spoilers)

1. We see Benjamin Bratt with his shirt off but not Halle Berry.
   
2. The aforementioned Bratt is a soft-spoken but firm, principled, devilishly handsome cop-of-color, who works with elementary school kids on his off hours, and has lines like, "I should've trusted you." and "I think you're unique and special, and that's why I like you."
   
3. Sharon Stone ... Everyone loves to hate Sharon Stone.
   
4. Stone has lines like, "I had everything: power, beauty, fame ... and then I turned 40 and they just threw me away." and HUSBAND: "Laurel, you don't want to do this!" STONE: "I'm a woman. I'm used to doing things I don't want to do."
   
5. Everyone else thinks of Catwoman as Michelle Pfieffer. Halle Berry thinks of Catwoman as Ertha Kitt.
   
6. Catwoman isn't out to save the country or the world or goverment plans or the city or out to avenge her father's murder ... her eventual goal is to keep the women of America from being subjected to an addictive facial cream that defies aging but causes massive scarring when you stop using it. (Berry does know that she has a Cover Girl contract, doesn't she?)
   
7. Bratt doesn't get Berry in the end.
   
8. Berry's fat and sassy, comic relief, female friend actually gets a hunk of her own at the end.
   

"You're kidding!" I said. "This is what you have for me? That Catwoman was too ... I don't know ... womanist for its audience? But what about Halle Berry? What about Halle Berry's breast implants? What about Halle Berry and her breast implants in the leather costume? Surely that's enough to justify any adolescent boy's cost of a ticket."

Sherman just snorted beneath noises that sounded like someone putting on a wig and said, "Kid, when are you ever going to learn? Boys dig looking at chicks ... but they don't want to listen to them whine about their lives." And before I could say anymore, he'd hung up -- probably off to find a new monestery. Let's hope he uses the same credit card. But I had other things to think about. Could he have been right? Could an online community and a critical establishment actually have turned their noses up at an action film because its viewpoint was not boy-oriented enough? Will I never get to see the whole Catwoman franchise that this movie promises? Did Catwoman not as much suck as get sucker punched? Man, that would really suck!