Catwoman
Not to be catty about it, but the stench of the litter pan is all over this big-screen $90 million disaster-in-waiting. It’s not hard to see why Halle Berry would want to put on a cat suit and become the first woman of color to play the lead in a blockbuster. After all, Berry is the first African-American woman to win the Best Actress Oscar (for Monster’s Ball). Sadly, Catwoman, allegedly a tale of female empowerment, declaws her ambitions. She ts out dowdy as Patience Phillips, a shy graphic artist at a cosmetics company run by the dictatorial George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his aging model wife, Laurel (Sharon Stone), who is also a dick. Then an Egyptian cat breathes new life into Patience, which inspires her to fight crime, flirt kinky with a cop (Benjamin Bratt) and wear a leather S&M outfit that would embarrass Grace Jones, not to mention Batman. So much for feminism. The director, someone named Pitof, uses a flashy editing style that makes the action impossible to follow. Stone gets the better lines, telling her husband “to stop dating children who were born the same year the cell phone was invented,” while Berry is stuck setting up the movie for a sequel. Let’s hope not. Meow.