Catwoman
With "Catwoman," Halle Berry is out to conquer the box office. To ensure victory, she has chosen for herself not a sequel to "B.A.P.S." but that most foolproof of summer genres, the comic-book flick. She fights crime -- sorry, "fights crime" -- in tight, black, low-cut, scratched-up leather pants and a sports-bra/bustier that gives her better support than anybody in the movie.
So the only risk for Berry would be to her dignity, which, at this point, seems made of titanium. Still, watching her run around in that getup I felt embarrassed, the way I do for people who put on makeup before climbing a StairMaster -- it's too much. I don't want to imply that the costume doesn't flatter Berry; to the contrary, actually. She just lacks conviction in it. During a tussle with Sharon Stone, who's stuck playing the heavy, Stone tells Berry she's pathetic. "You look like a little girl playing dress up," Stone says, and it stings a little more than it was probably meant to, because it seems true. Berry portrays a meek beauty-company graphic designer named Patience Philips in a city that seems a composite, not of actual cities but of cities concocted for commercials. And she has a sassy best friend (Alex Bornstein) who seems a composite of other sassy best friends. After Patience overhears that her company's new cream, Beauline, will erode the skin of any woman who stops wearing it, she is killed and brought back to life by a cat that coughs on her. From here, she's handy with a whip and endowed with incredible agility.
To show off her new skills, endless passages give us a digitized Berry flying around rooftops and through sweaty alleys a la "Spider-Man." But when Spidey swings through Manhattan, we're at least aware that he's ecstatic about it. With this compu-catwoman, who knows?
Our heroine seeks revenge for her murder, but twice she's framed for other slayings. There's also a cop on her tail -- I mean trail, and he's played by Benjamin Bratt, who puts enough sex in his voice to give you a Billy Dee Williams hot flash. If only someone had put a thought in his character's brain -- Bratt's detective appears to have a "Police Academy" IQ. At some point, Catwoman knocks him about, licking and kissing him. Later, he goes home with Patience, and Bratt is so confused by the similarities, he actually has to check with forensics to see if they're the same woman.
True, a man is necessary only to win back the women in the audience mystified about why they've come to see Halle Berry do the ridiculous, like slipping her feline frame through the bars of a jail cell. For the movie's woeful lack of eroticism we can thank the director, a French digital effects guru who goes by the name of Pitof. And, as it turns out, getting turned on by "Catwoman" is beside the point. She's not in it for kicks, or licks, for that matter. She's here to empower. A spinsterish cat lady (Frances Conroy) explains that Patience belongs to an elite group of independent, misunderstood female subversives -- no, not the great Catwomen throughout popular culture, like Eartha Kitt or Michelle Pfeiffer, but a more clandestine group that has existed for eons, meant to free other women from the shackles of conformity. The Siamese Liberation Army?
Berry wears the S&M duds, but it's Stone, as Laurel Hedare, a diabolical, long-in-the-tooth supermodel, who seems kinky and gives off what excitement there is to be had. When Catwoman breaks into her mansion, Stone seems more thrilled than bewildered. She gives the proceedings a smattering of Hollywood realism, too: The beauty company replaces her face on billboards, which appear all over the movie, with a younger one. Laurel's campy desperation to keep mattering on the way to 50 seems more crucial than whatever Berry's hero alleges to stands for. What's happening to Stone, and women like her, seems like a crime worth fighting.
Wesley Morris can reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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