In the early months of 2005, Halle Berry famously won a coveted Razzie award for playing Patience Phillips in Pitof’s superheroine film/feminist polemic Catwoman. Although we had seen the character in movies before (Lee Meriwether played Catwoman in 1966, Michelle Pfeiffer in 1992), this was the first time she was given a solo adventure, free of Batman or any other notable Batman characters. The result was… well, to use the word “hated” might be too light a term. Catwoman was loathed from the very start. It had not vocal defenders, and even Halle Berry – in her Razzie acceptance speech – openly acknowledged how bad the film was. Catwoman currently enjoys a 9% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
And there’s not a singular element of Catwoman that people tend to indicate as its weakest point. Not the direction, not the new conceits, not the casting, not the script. Its perceived badness is a blur of all its combined elements. It’s that rarest of beasts; a film that is loathed on every level.
Low approval ratings grab our attention. Here at Trolling, we must defend the indefensible as part of our blood-born duty, and few films of the last decade are more indefensible than Catwoman. So we deliberately ask you, dear readers: Is Catwoman all that bad? Does this maligned superheroine flick deserve its hate? Indeed, when one really looks at the film, and analyzes its individual elements, can one come to the conclusion that Catwoman RULES? Let’s look into that.
I agree, the film is corny, the dialogue is pretty dumb across the board, and there’s a lot in the movie that’s juts downright ridiculous. But the hate that is constantly piled up on Catwoman‘s head is unwarranted. We have a bright, funny, fun, weird version of a classical character embodied by a sexy lady in a cool outfit. Catwoman is fun to watch, and a great flick to enjoy in a large group. You will have fun.
Until next week, let the hate mail flow.
Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
Catwoman RULES!
-
Camp is No Bad Thing
The one major defense people tend to have for Catwoman is that it's campy. This is a defense often granted to Batman & Robin as well. I will reiterate that just because something is corny and campy doesn't mean it's bad. Yes, Berry overacts, and yes the story is a bit corny, but that's not a bad thing. The campy outfits and minxy growling give Catwoman a forthrightly enjoyable sexiness that is hard to deny. I think the reason people reacted badly to the broad campy sexuality of the movie, was that they wanted a Catwoman that resembled the comic more. But that's not the filmmakers' fault. That's just the prejudice of the closed-minded audience talking.
-
It's Sexy
Halle Berry is a very good looking lady, and she looks great in this film. The new Catwoman outfit, which looks like an improvised Halloween costume combined with expensive S&M accoutrements, is pretty awesome. Sexuality has always been part of the Catwoman character (just look at Pfeiffer's wholly fetishistic outfit from 1992), but this was the first time that Catwoman seemed to use her sexuality as a weapon. She was constantly prowling like a runway model, asserting her body and seducing her victims. Her sexuality was no longer an incidental weapon in her arsenal, but the primary fusillade. And that's awesome to look at.
-
It's About Women
Superheroines in movies – and I'm thinking of The Black Widow specifically – tend to serve as window dressing. They are often mere supporting characters to the fight-'em-all male protagonists, and are at best seen as capable gal Fridays with few concerns of their own. Catwoman is a film about females and female concerns. Modern feminism is suffused with polarizing notions of wanting to be powerful and capable, but also being feminine and demure. Catwoman strikes the balance. It's about a woman who gets to be strong, who gets to face off against another woman (the villainess is played by Sharon Stone), but whose superpowers also give her the ability to seduce men and become more confident about her femininity. She's a good role model and the star of her own movie.
-
It's Funny
For however seriously the audiences take them (and fans of superhero movies take nothing more seriously) we all have to openly admit that there is something silly about the notion of the superhero. You can make Batman as dark, violent, broody, and philosophical as you like, but we still have to consider that those little pointy bat ears on his costume look pretty ridiculous from an objective standpoint. Catwoman is about a woman who gets magical cat powers from an Egyptian deity, and it addresses some of the sillier, practical implications therein; she wants to sleep in high place now, for instance. That kind of stuff is funny, fun, and an important thing to acknowledge when making a superhero film. Yes, I guess Spider-Man's costume would run in the laundry.
-
About Those Powers...
This is the first time Catwoman has had superpowers (although there may be some obscure precedent in the decades of her comic book history). Traditionally, Catwoman is a burglar who uses techno-gadgets to cause mischief and occasionally aid or hinder Batman, depending on her attitude that day. Does giving her superpowers really ruin the character, though? I say no. All superheroes have had weird distaff off-shoots over the years, in both movies and comics. Spider-Man's webs became a mutant power in the movies, and while some complained about the change, no one said it ruined the character. I have no problem with even dramatic alterations to a comic book character for a movie adaptation. We can have both.
-
Fun, Silly Tone
Thanks to the dark dramatics of Christopher Nolan and the tonal reverence of the Avengers series, fans of superhero movies are clearly not big fans of lightheartedness anymore. Even when the film itself is tonally bright (The Avengers, the first Iron Man, the forthcoming Guardians of the Galaxy) there is a deep seriousness to the material that often undercuts a lot of what makes the characters fun to begin with: the fact that they're kind of silly and that the characters' creators were just fooling around when they invented these people. Catwoman is people getting together and having fun with the character. They're laughing while they write, and their joy comes through on the screen. Remember fun? Laughing during a superhero movie? Smiling? It's evidence that not all superheros have to have a “mythos.” Often, a character can just – in a Zen sense – be.
