Catwoman (2004)
Directed by Pitof
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, fascinated by both of her personas.
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Sadly, that project never materialized; instead, we were belatedly treated to 2004's Turkey Hall of Fame contender Catwoman, with Halle Berry.
So let's just start with the decision to extract one of the most popular villains from the Batman canon and attempt to make her a superhero in her own right.
The last time Catwoman was portrayed on screen, it was by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns.
Halle Berry makes her bid for box-office superstardom in "Catwoman," a spinoff of the "Batman" franchise that is pretty slim pickings compared with some recent comic book adaptations (not just the "Spider-Man" movies but "X-Men" and even "Hellboy" come to mind).
Catwoman was introduced in the second of four Batman films Batman Returns.
Fans of the original Catwoman from any of her various Batman-related incarnations (comics, cartoons, TV show or Tim Burton’s Batman Returns) should be advised that the only thing the new movie has in common with the original is the name, a woman and a vaguely cat-like suit.
And compared to Michele Pfeiffer in Batman Returns, her purring and hissing are laughable.
And unfortunately, she doesn’t have the depth or growly complexity of the earlier Catwoman played by Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman Returns.”
The idea for a feature film centered around DC's charismatic action girl anti-hero hed been around at least since the mid-1990s, when Michelle Pfeiffer declined to revisit the role she so brilliantly essayed in 1992's Batman Returns ; from that moment, a Catwoman picture existed in many different vague forms, with many different connections to the comic book character, to the Pfeiffer creation, or some entirely new figure with the name and approximate history of one or both; the final judgment is that the eventual Catwoman we have is credited with story by Theresa Rebeck and John Brancato & Michael Ferris, and screenplay by Brancato & Ferris and John Rogers, but who really can say?
Instead of veering into outright insanity, director Pitof (apparently this generations Tarsem) and the gang of writers come up with the same old stupidities; incoherent action scenes, evil villains whose diabolical plans make absolutely no sense and, in the character of Patiences co-worker played by Alex Borstein, the single most annoying sidekick character since Rob Schneider appeared in "Judge Dredd".
It worked with Kate Beckinsale and Milla Jovovich in the “Underworld” and “Resident Evil” series respectively, but not so much for Charlize Theron in “Aeon Flux” or Halle Berry in “Catwoman.”