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Catwoman (2004)

DVD Cover (Warner Brother)
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Overall Rating 36%
Overall Rating
Ranked #1,402
...out of 20,319 movies
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Genres / Traits: Action Superhero Film DC Comics Cats

Connections: DC: Catwoman

Liquidated after discovering a corporate conspiracy, mild-mannered graphic artist Patience Phillips washes up on an island, where she's resurrected and endowed with the prowess of a cat -- and she's eager to use her new skills ... as a vigilante. Before you can say "cat and mouse," handsome gumshoe Tom Lone is on her tail. --TMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: August 20, 2004
Patience Philips is a meek young lady working as an advertising artist for Hedare Beauty, a cosmetics company, and is in charge of coming up with the advertisements for a new line of skin-treatment that they're coming out with known as Beauline. Her first ad design is rejected, and she's given one more day to come up with something better. The next day, she's rushing to finish up the project and have it sent over to the boss, when she finds out that the delivery-person who was going to take it to him is not available. She decides to take it over to him herself, and when she enters the building to deliver it, she overhears some damaging facts about the upcoming Beauline product. The guys discussing said facts overhear her inside the building, and chase her down... eventually killing her off and having her body dumped into the river. When her corpse washes ashore, a cat breathes life back into her, and in turn, gives her the agility and reflexes of a cat. Now, she must balance her normal life as Patience along with the budding romance between her and a cop by the name of Tom Lone... as well as her desire to use her new-found skills and abilities to stop the distribution of the Beauline product before it can harm the general public.

Once again, I find myself giving the standard disclaimer about my review. I've never read the comics in which Catwoman appeared. I was always more of a Marvel fan-boy, so I really couldn't tell you how faithful this adaptation of the character was. Nonetheless, that didn't keep me from slightly enjoying this film, even though it was nothing new in the recent string of super-hero films. The storyline was pretty much the same thing we've seen done numerous times over, with the lead hero overcoming all odds to take down the big corporation that's done her wrong and getting a bit of romance in the process. There's a number of twists in the storyline towards the end of the film, and as usual, none of them came off as being very shocking... you could tell they were coming many scenes in advance due to the abundant over-use of the "hint-hint" method of setting things up. Another problem that I had with this film was the style of camera-angles that were used throughout the film. Instead of the slow-motion Matrix effect that has been beaten to death lately, the director decided to do the exact opposite and speed the scenes up when the action started. By itself, that wouldn't have been a huge problem, but the director also decided to show angle after angle of the scene in rapid-fire sequence; imagine watching the shaky back-and-forth scenes of The Blair Witch Project in fast-forward, and that's the way most of the action scenes were shot in this film.

Halle Berry got a lot of flack from the mainstream media for her performance here, but I thought she did great in her role. She switched back and forth between the clumsy and mild-mannered Patience, to the agile and smart-ass Catwoman flawlessly. There's a lot of stunt-double / CGI (whichever route they took) work in the action sequences, but during the scenes in which Halle was doing the work and giving her lines, she did fine. Benjamin Bratt plays Tom, her love-interest, and comes off as giving one of the weaker performances in the film. He wasn't bad as an actor, it's just that the role itself is quite over-used lately, and he didn't bring anything new to the role to set himself apart from all of the guys who've played the role before him. His line-delivery sounded like every other love-interest in a film of this nature, and he really didn't try to stand out too much... as though he were content with being bland and unoriginal throughout. Sharon Stone plays Laurel Hedare, the wife of the owner of the cosmetics company. Throughout most of the running-time of the film, she comes off as being quite boring and lame, but when things take a turn around the end (along with an incredibly lame storyline twist), so does her performance. Even though she's going along with the aforementioned lame storyline twist, she does great in her performance here; it's just sad that it took about an hour of the running-time before she got interesting.

Overall, this is a pretty entertaining addition to the slew of super-hero films released in the past few years, but there's not a whole lot that sets this one apart from the others. The same formula is used here; normal person going about her daily life, something changes things, she gets revenge, insert loads of action scenes and one-liners, and mix in a bit of romance. Nothing very unique, but if you enjoyed the other films in the genre, you wouldn't be too disappointed with this one. 5/10 from myself; average, but would have been a lot better if it wasn't so formulaic.
Big D #1: Big D - added August 21, 2004 at 6:14pm
YAY!!! Another movie about a famous comic book character...CATWOMAN. Fantastic movie.
Christopher #2: Christopher - added August 22, 2004 at 2:03am
Are you not familiar with the comic character, or did Halle's blackness miss your eye sight?
Big D #3: Big D - added August 23, 2004 at 2:39am
My answer: 50/50.
Crispy #4: Crispy - added September 10, 2004 at 10:22am
Wasn't Catwoman a villian? Against Batman?
Stary_Night_sky #5: Stary_Night_sky - added September 25, 2004 at 10:24pm
Utter shit
dadarulz #6: dadarulz - added July 23, 2005 at 7:03am
They spat on the original comicbook, used it as toilet paper and handed it to WB as a scenario which therefore led to this fiasco.
bluemeanie #7: bluemeanie - added December 27, 2005 at 5:53pm
One of the worst films I have ever seen. Halle Berry is absolutely laughable here. 0/10.
Vash #8: Vash - added July 27, 2008 at 8:53pm
why did they name her patience phillips..?
Crispy #9: Crispy - added February 28, 2009 at 1:53am
15 shades of pointless. My god this blew.
Lucid Dreams #10: Lucid Dreams - added September 11, 2010 at 2:41pm
Five out of fucking ten chad? This movie was horrible! 1/10
AttnDefDis #11: AttnDefDis - added September 13, 2010 at 2:17pm
I totally agree with all of the comments that say this movie sucked/blew. It really is laughable. I love Sharon Stone and even she couldn't save this. I don't even know why they called this Catwoman, seeing as how it doesn't follow any Catwoman story line ever. It was just an excuse to have Halle Berry dress up in a God awful costume and act like a cat. Totally atrocious.
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