A Decent Movie if You're Not a Genre Snob

I rented Catwoman along with another movie that I was told to run away from. The other movie was indeed a yawner. I was pleasantly surprised by Catwoman. It was entertaining. And I actually watched parts again. It was not a man-hater’s film. Where did those rumors come from? And even if it wasn’t a timeless four-star movie like Forrest Gump, it certainly didn’t deserve a Razzie. In my opinion it was at least as good as the first Spiderman movie but not the second. The movie was high quality throughout.

I think that Halle was just a tad too sexy, which may have made reviewers see it as campy. She was also twisted into all sorts of crouching positions, which might raise a few eyebrows. But in the interest of sexual fairness, Spiderman was in all those positions and more. At times I felt I was watching the black scorpion minus the cheese and minus the bad acting and horrible story. Despite her beauty liability, it didn’t take away from her acting ability, which was fine in the movie. Her skin was incredibly smooth in the film. It made me stare at her a bit.

The soundtrack was especially awesome. I will buy the CD

The CG (computer graphics), not CGI (common gateway interface), were amazing by year 2000 standards. In 2004, they could have done a bit better, but no one, except maybe the matrix guys have bothered to get the physics right throughout all action sequences. Halle leaps downward too quickly as if she has a flight gain. She can jump up as fast as they want her to with deceleration slowing her and arcing her trajectory, but her acceleration when jumping down from a high roof to a lower roof was unreal. She also didn’t arc enough. They should have employed slow motion here and there, which suspends physics judgment – but not so much slow motion that I think I’m watching the Six Million Dollar Man. BTW, I know that CGI also stands for computer generated imagery. I just remember the early days when it was only CG.

In defense of the CG, Spiderman and Daredevil had the same problems. Hulk proved it could be done well though.

One more problem with the CG was Halle’s sexy walk. You could tell that they kept using the same walk from different angles. It reminded me of the James T. West animation from The Wild Wild West circa 1965. It wasn’t bad CG. It just became recognizable.

Remember being a kid, watching a Godzilla movie and hating that most of it was fast forward material, and bad material at that? Catwoman doesn’t have fast forward material. This is the kind of superhero movie that I like. The hero acquires her power, and is not reluctant to use it, and the scriptwriter doesn’t have an overbearing subplot to mask the fact that he’s writing a superhero script. This is what went wrong with the Hulk. Ang Lee refused to make a straight superhero film. Instead, he tried to hide a superhero film within a movie about family therapy and ruined it. Plenty of science fiction movies with a superhero angle have this self-loathing and crippling device which diminishes the hero, who everyone tuned in or paid $10 to see, to mere moments here and there on the screen. Remember poor Lou Ferigno? The alter ego becomes the star, who NO ONE came to see, getting big air time. Not only is this device stilted and boring, it’s bait and switch. Catwoman doesn’t make this mistake. Catwoman was about a character called Catwoman, not Patience Phillips. For the arrogance of taking the lead character seriously, they got the razzie.

I give Catwoman a 7 out of ten. It’s not a guilty pleasure. It’s a pleasure. You’ll be concerned for her, you’ll cheer for her and you’ll laugh aloud. This movie has been done a great disservice by reviewers who are generally lying snobs when it comes to this genre. The movie is family friendly without being unrealistically non-violent. The peep show isn’t intentional. Halle is just sexy. They couldn’t help it.