Catwoman (2004)

Directed by Pitof. Starring Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson, Alex Borstein, Frances Conroy, Michael Massee, Peter Wingfield. [PG-13]

DC Comics’ felonious feline comic book villain/antihero gets her own feature film (a looooose adaptation); it languished in development hell for years and should’ve stayed there. Berry is a “dowdy” graphic artist working for an evil cosmetics company who eavesdrops where she shouldn’t be dropping eaves, winds up dead. Lucky for her, a clowder of cats (that’s what they’re called—look it up) is around to resurrect her and infuse her undead mind and body with abilities and behavioral instincts that resemble those of kitties. An eye-poppingly wretched embarrassment of illogical ideas, physics-mangled action, demeaning performances, third-rate CGI, and machine-gun editing (even during the “calmer” scenes); the sort of disaster that comes around every few years to become the new punchline for soulless, misguided Hollywood products. Does for basketball what The Room did for football, for Ferris wheels what the Hindenburg did for the zeppelin flight industry, and for sushi what Jennifer Lopez did for Thanksgiving-related cunnilingus puns. Granted, it wiggles into so-bad-it’s-funny territory at times, and (speaking of wiggling) Berry looks great even in her ridiculous “torn-leather dominatrix” outfit, but jaws drop more often in response to what an erroneously-conceived catastrophe this thing is on all levels of production.

11/100