Catwoman
It’s not often when a movie comes along that catches my cat’s fancy. I have several, but Mr. Kitty, a Siamese with definite attitude, takes his movies very seriously. He’s very vocal, often showing disdain for films where cats are the butt of the joke, or a tired cliche in a horror film (according to Mr. Kitty, he has never licked tuna juice from the private area of a teenage boy, or leapt out of the shadows to scare anyone).
Mr. Kitty’s favorite film is the original That Darn Cat with Hayley Mills. His least favorite is Cats & Dogs. While he wasn’t a big fan of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, he never misses the episode of the television series Batman when Eartha Kitt played the role.
After convincing the ticket taker that Mr. Kitty wasn’t a camcorder disguised as an grumpy old cat, we made our way into the theater. Mr. Kitty doesn’t like rocking chairs. He prefers love seats so he can spread out. If you’re going to spend two hours watching Halle Berry run around in tight leather, you’re going to need a lot of room to lick and scratch.
Mr. Kitty didn’t care much for the Fandango ad. He believes bags are good for only two things: bringing food home, and carrying out used kitty litter. He calls it the circle of life.
While I personally like the idea of Halle Berry as Catwoman, Mr. Kitty wasn’t impressed. She looked great, but only two teats? How could she possibly feed a litter with only two teats? And all that leather. Mr. Kitty likes rough sex, but leather slows him down. That’s why his bitch doesn’t wear a collar.
I thought Mr. Kitty would have a hard time keeping up with the plot, but he’s coughed up hair- balls that were more complex. Mousy (Kitty’s word, not mine) cosmetics advertising designer Patience Phillips (Berry) discovers her company’s new anti-aging cream comes with horrific side- effects. Flushed to her death by villainous corporate creep Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone), Patience is resurrected by an Egyptian cat and becomes the enigmatic Catwoman.
Nice gig if you can get it, but Mr. Kitty was more concerned with how she controls fleas and ticks, or the hunky detective (Benjamin Bratt) who has fallen for Patience but believes Catwoman is a criminal. Kitty understood Patience’s duality. During the day he’s Mr. Kitty, but at night he’s a popular DJ for an Asian-American Hip Hop group. He knows how it feels to sit on the fence, balancing two lives, never sure which side you’ll end up on.
Cats are supposed to have nine lives, yet director Pitof (a name even Mr. Kitty can pronounce) and writers John Brancato, Michael Ferris, and John Rogers can’t come up with enough original material to satisfy one. The anti-heroine looks good (wait until she starts to shed, Mr. Kitty warned) but lacks conviction; the villain is laughably over-the-top (Mr. Kitty said he could take her with one paw tied behind his back); and the scenery looks like a kitty litter liner.
Mr. Kitty does give Berry credit for some of her feline instincts, and says that he would mount her if and when she came into heat. Mr. Kitty also thought the cat extras were okay, but could have been better. He said with more birds, rodents and some string, Catwoman might have been a better film. So now it’s back to the TIVO and Eartha Kitt’s “purr-fect” performance on Batman.
Now if I can just get Mr. Kitty to tell me where he hid my copy of “Stuart Little.”
THE CAT’S MEOW-OUCH
Berry becomes Kitten With A Whip
CATWOMAN
Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson, Frances Conroy, Alex Borstein. Directed by Pitof. Rated PG-13. 104 Minutes.
MR. KITTY RATING: One Paw Out of Four
