Purrgatory

OK, folks, close your eyes and thinkof a litter box that, through inattention, has remained unclean throughout the course of a month. Got it? Now, if you are tempted—even by morbid curiosity—to check out Catwoman, repeat the exercise above. Just to be safe, throw in an imagined nine lives of accumulated dander, and you still can’t compete with the sensual torture of enduring this misbegotten abomination.

Halle Berry clocks in as a mousy advert artist who stumbles across a nefarious plot by marble-faced cosmetic company exec Sharon Stone and her hubby to dump an addictive and possibly disfiguring facial cream on the market. Discovered, she’s whacked. A nearby Egyptian feline gives her the breath of life, and she is reborn as a revisionist Catwoman.

Nothing here works. One-note poser of a director Pitof attempts to replicate through hyperactive EmptyVee editing the panel conventions of a comic book, only to induce a motion-sickness malaise unparalleled since The Blair Witch Project. Actors Berry, Benjamin Bratt and Sharon Stone serve as nothing more than cardboard caricatures, and at times I cringed in my seat in empathy for their public humiliation at having to spout the preposterous dialogue. Plot holes are so blatant that an 8-year-old behind me repeatedly felt obligated to point them out to his mother.

Hell, even Berry’s rent-a-boobs are boring here.

The flick can’t even get its message straight. A wannabe grrrl-empowerment vehicle, it essentially devolves into a kick in the nuts (both literally and figuratively). Here, makeup equals oppression, and yet when liberated as Catwoman, Berry slathers on the lipstick and eyeliner. Mixed messages, anyone? At least the director stopped short of having Halle howling in heat outside Bratt’s window, although he comes close at times, offering up what seems like an S&M primer aimed at 12-year-olds.