When did Catwoman stop being a villain and become a hero?
In this version by director Pitof (a former visual-effects artist from France), Halle Berry plays Patience Philips, a drone in the graphic design department of a huge cosmetics corporation. When she stumbles upon evidence of the hideous side effects of their new miracle product, the security goons literally flush her life down the sewer, and she becomes Catwoman.
One of the great joys of Tim Burton's Batman Returns was seeing Michelle Pfeiffer slink into that leather outfit and take on Batman in a dance of fetishistic glee. Reborn as the scantily clad Catwoman, Halle Berry clearly enjoys the title role, but cast in her own movie, she's deprived of the defining relationship for her character. Instead, she must settle for Benjamin Bratt, who seems to have the market cornered on sensitive cops.
If there's any fun to be had, it's in watching the campy catfight between Berry and Sharon Stone, as the head of the cosmetics conspiracy. It's here that the film takes on its most feminist tone: "I'm a woman—I'm used to doing all kinds of things I don't want to do," Stone quips. But when the narrative breaks down into a series of music videos, it seems the real point of the movie is to squeeze Halle Berry into one of the most ridiculous costumes in motion picture history.