atience Philips (Berry) is a frustrated artist whose meek nature has relegated her to creating graphic designs for a massive cosmetics company, Hedare Beauty, run by the imperious George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his supermodel wife, Laurel (Stone).
George orders Philips to redo the art for an advertising campaign to roll out Hedare's important new product: Beau-Line, an experimental new anti-aging cream. She has until midnight.
Back in her city apartment, Philips climbs out a window to rescue a gray cat on a high ledge and finds herself stranded. A passing police detective, Tom Lone (Bratt), thinks she's trying to commit suicide and rushes upstairs, catching Philips as she slips.
Late for work, Philips rushes away. Later that night, with her deadline approaching, Philips discovers that no messengers are available. She must deliver the ads to George personally.
Arriving at Hedare Beauty's factory near the river, Philips creeps in a back door and overhears a scientist telling someone—George?—that Beau-Line has a serious problem. Those who use it for an extended period of time develop headaches, disfiguring skin problems—and worse. But someone hears Philips and orders her captured. Panicked, she runs, dodging bullets from hired thugs. She runs into a massive drainage pipe, which the thugs close and flush out, drowning Philips and dumping her into the marshlands below.
Philips washes up, motionless, in the mud. A coven of cats, led by a large gray Egyptian Mau cat—the same feline from the ledge—gathers. The gray cat breathes life back into Philips, who awakes with a start. Revived, disoriented, Philips finds she has catlike new reflexes, unusual strength, a renewed taste for fish—and a burning curiosity to discover who wanted her dead.
This cat puts the Ow in Meow
Catwoman, from French commercial director and visual-effects maven Pitof (Alien: Resurrection), breathes new life into the durable character first introduced in DC Comics' Batman number one in 1940. But nine lives or no, this incarnation of the feline fatale dispenses with much of the previous mythology, including her name, her Gotham City address and her ambiguous relationship with sometime paramour Bruce Wayne/Batman.
In its place, writers Brancato & Ferris (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) and Rogers (The Core) come up with an entirely new, Buffy-ized take on Catwoman, with a tale of female empowerment. Alas, unlike Berry's conflicted title character, this Catwoman doesn't exactly land on its feet.
The problems with Catwoman begin with the script. Berry's Philips is a cartoon, and not in a good way. As Patience, Berry is a stammering stereotype of a wallflower, a characterization undercut by her implausible hotness. As Catwoman, she's an incongruous S&M tigress who bears little resemblance to either Patience or any actual human being. Though the story makes much of the inherent duality of all women, the script fails successfully to integrate the two sides of its central character: There's not enough cat in Patience, and not enough patience in the Cat.
Pitof also displays a disturbing fetishistic attachment to Catwoman's otherwise laughable leather-whip-bondage aesthetic, and the writers have larded the script with a litter-box-ful of lame cat puns.
Beyond that, the flirtatious romance between Bratt and Berry is as strained as a cat coughing up a hairball, and the two gorgeous stars muster zero chemistry. The other characters in the movie are over-the-top caricatures. (Props to Six Feet Under's normally excellent Frances Conroy, who maintains a straight face while uttering some of the film's most ridiculous lines as a mystical feline Earth mother.)
The visuals, meanwhile, recall the dizzying acrobatics of Daredevil and betray Pitof's video/ad roots: lots of flash and quick cuts and swooping cameras, all to little purpose. Compare the similarly dynamic Spider-Man 2, in which the bravura images actually serve the story. Particularly annoying are Catwoman's cheeseball computer effects of Berry in cat drag as she scampers about the city like a tabby on crack.
