Catwoman (PG-13, 2004)

Based on the comic book character, CATWOMAN centers on Patience Philips (Halle Berry), a sweet and frumpy advertising designer at the Hedare's cosmetics company. Everything changes when Patience discovers that the Hedare's new facial cream is an addictive drug with skin-warping damage for any who would try to break the habit. Clearly, Patience must be gotten rid of, but little do the Hedare henchmen know that when they kill her they are only awakening a vengeful, fish-eating leather fetishist who really knows how to fight in stiletto heels. Co, Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt) develops feelings for the daytime Patience, and an allergy to her nightly alter-ego, Catwoman. Patience's guide to her new life is the cat lover, Ophelia (Frances Conroy), who introduces her to both catnip and the hefty history of her new identity. It turns out that all women have two sides and for certain special females, getting in touch with their inner feline allows them to un-cage a panther.

Awkward and clumsy as a cat in high heels, this version of the comic book character Catwoman does not have enough to sustain one life, much less nine. The plot is thin and the script and editing have an unfinished, even inept feel. Berry seems to confuse a cat walk with a catwalk, prancing in heels as though she is an unusually busty runway model in next year's dominatrix fashion show. There's something hypocritical at best and absurd at worst to pretend to be about empowerment and freeing women from the need to conform to narrow standards of youth and beauty when the movie's heroine looks like Catwoman Barbie at a goth B&D rally.

One of the largest hairballs that choke this movie is the complete inability of Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone) to be suitably over-the-top enough to make the final catfight memorable. In costume crusader stories, the bad guys have to be just as fantastic in their own way as their counterparts, even when they are fighting morally ambiguous, prowling kitties like Catwoman.