When is a cat a dog? When its Catwoman. Some movies are dead on arrival, and by opening day last weekend it was official: the latest incarnation of Bob Kanes Batman babe was a bad movie. Most critics panned it; their headline writers have had their fun with it: Far from Purrr-fect, Should Be Fixed, Spits Out a Hairball. The film may be the most easily mocked hymn to feline power since Cats came to Broadway. And this one wont run for 21 years.
The movie will also not come close to making back its $100 million production budget and $35 million marketing cost. But even a botched action film can offer lessons to the attentive. Here are four:
Dont Marvel-ize a D.C. comic star. The idea was to give the heroine flaws more suited to a Marvel-comic sensitive lunk like Spider-mans Peter Parker or The Hulks Bruce Banner. But the gorgeous Berry is implausible in this sort of an under-cat role; it demands too great a suspension of disbelief. What alternate universe does the movie dwell in where Halle Berry cant get a man until she gets all leathered up?
Rethink Halle Barrys star quality. Maybe shes a star who doesnt need movies. Her iconographic status guarantees that she always comes on strong, as in the James Bond Die Another Day and the X-Men series But theres something strange about an actress whose impact is greater with her first impression than her final one. Shes best in passive roles, where the only assaultive aspect is her beauty or her bosom . She hasnt the oomph for the sassier parts of her role here most of which are CGId anyway. Its hard to think that, in next years Foxy Brown remake, shell be able to invest the emotional heft Pam Grier gave the tatty original three decades ago.
Beware directors with one name. Pitof, a French special-effects wizard who worked on movies by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Luc Besson , has a trapezists love of swooping camera moves, but hes lame directing humans. Nor can he make a persuasive connection between the actors and the computer images that eventually infiltrate and take over their characters. This time, the one-namer is likely to leave viewers Pi-tof.
Dont let your villain have more luster than your heroine. Sharon Stone, who plays an ex-model and eternal bitch named Laurel, may represent an earlier generation of star actress than Berrys — and some might say actress isnt quite the word for Stone — but she can hijack a scene from a mere Oscar-winner without so much as uncrossing her legs. Stone, 46, looks preternaturally young here, which is the movies one good joke: Laurels unnaturally gorgeous face is so pumped-up with chemicals, it cracks on contact with the heroines fist. But Laurel is the Catwoman woman wed put in a sequel. It could be called RoBotox.
But there will be no Catwoman 2. Which is a real botch, since the Selina Kyle character has scored so often before — notably when played by Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt . For a potent, poignant, deliciously wicked Selina, stop reading this website right now and go rent Tim Burtons 1992 Batman Returns. And avoid this cat with no life.
