Review: Catwoman

The snapping, whiz-bang wizardry of Pitof’s Catwoman is the kind of woefully underwhelming pop cinema that gives detractors of the new American action cinema fuel for their ever-growing fires. Pitof’s Catwoman is an exercise in futile escapist revisionism, taking a well-established character of print, broadcast and film (Michele Pfeiffer remains the feline anti-hero’s finest incarnation) and channeling her into a sexless, bootstrap and leather runway model with a whip. The problem with an uber-stylist like Pitof is that he lacks the geographic formalism of a pop filmmaker like McG, whose Charlie's Angels films crackle with a dynamism lacking in this latest music video wunderkind's offspring.

Halle Berry, less and less interesting as an actress as the years go by, mumbles and stumbles and purrs through a lifeless role, mixing it up with the even more bland Benjamen Bratt as her romantic interest. Sharon Stone hams and vamps it up as a villainess straight out of a control-freak fetishist's hallway closet.

Pitof's compositions, all show and no Go, have a certain lack of geography that belie his experience at crafting cohesive action set pieces. And the CGI Catwoman is one of the most atrocious creations of contemporary filmic special visual effects that I've seen in a very long time. Alternately campy and painfully tedious, Catwoman lacks the B-Goddess appeal of a thrilla like Showgirls or Basic Instinct. And it has absolutely no appeal for the comic book geek sect.

This is one of the strangest and most fearsome of big-budget summer movie blockbuster wannabes: a film without an audience.

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