Catwoman (PG-13)
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This came out in 2004, but I didn't see it until 2022. You know, back in 1992 there was a little movie called Batman Returns, which featured the character Catwoman (aka Selina Kyle), played by Michelle Pfeiffer. After that there was talk of making a spin-off movie about Catwoman, but that got stuck in development hell for years, and never really materialized. Instead, we got this. It's not about Selina Kyle, but rather a new character named Patience Phillips (Halle Berry). Because this is a character that never appeared in comic books, I can't really consider it a comic book adaptation, so I was forced to choose a different category, and I decided to go with "action". Anyway, the movie was a failure both critically and commercially, but I still wanted to check it out for myself. And I'm glad I finally did. While some might call it "one of the worst movies ever made", I think that's a hell of an exaggeration. I almost rated it one smiley (or "kinda liked"), but that might be a little too generous. Still, I believe it deserves at least "meh and three quarters", which is my next rating below one smiley. And remember, in my rating system, "meh" is not bad, it's neutral. So this is a bit above neutral, while not actually being good. Mostly the movie seems like an excuse for Berry to be sexy, but the action scenes are okay to look at, too. The story is pretty weak, though.

So, what can I say about the plot? Patience is an aspiring artist, who works as an ad designer for a cosmetics company called Hedare Beauty, which is run by an asshole named George Hedare. Patience has a best friend who also works there, named Sally (Alex Borstein). And George is married to a woman named Laurel (Sharon Stone), who until recently was Hedare Beauty's top model, but she's just been replaced by a younger woman (who is of no real importance to the story). One day, Patience meets a police detective named Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt), and they soon begin a romantic relationship. One night when Patience is trying to deliver a new design to George, she overhears a conversation about the medical problems caused by Hedare's newest beauty product, Beau-line, which is about to launch. When they realize they've been overheard, they send a fixer to kill her. After she's killed, she's revived by a cat named Midnight, but this is some kind of mystical Egyptian cat, which gives her catlike enhanced senses and agility, so she becomes a badass. It also gives her a secondary personality, which is more confident and assertive than Patience normally is. I want to say that some of the time when she's scurrying around on walls and things, it kind of looks like watching parkour on fast-forward. Except some of the time she's on all fours. Anyway... Patience now has no memory of the day she died, so she wants to find out what happened to her. She gets some information about Catwomen through the ages from Midnight's owner, Ophelia Powers (Frances Conroy). She also gets framed for a couple of murders, and as Catwoman is pursued by Tom, who has no idea she's Patience. And a bunch of other stuff happens, which I don't want to bother going into.

A lot of the dialog is kind of cheesy, and the story doesn't always (if ever) make much sense. Still, I didn't dislike watching it, even if there was little I actually liked about it. And I don't know what else to tell you.