TODAY'S MOVIE REVIEW: Joining the 'Catwoman' pun brigade




Some observations that were cut for space from today's Oregonian review of "Catwoman" :

(1) Sharon Stone comes across these days as a delicious, cackling, stony-eyed cross between Brigitte Nielsen and Joan Crawford. (And anyone who dares spend money in a theater on the film should check out Stone's face in some of the movie's early scenes for the light CGI shimmer that suggests digital wrinkle erasure.) She's great in the film, which is otherwise pretty uniformly awful; someone needs to write a good movie for Stone around this mature, vampy persona she's created for herself.

(2) It would have been easy and fun to fill my review with a bunch of bad cat puns -- but a gaggle of screenwriters have filled Halle Berry's mouth with most of them already. (See paragraph one, word one of my own review for an example of the punning plaguing today's film-criticism pages. What can I say? I had a weak moment.)

(3) I have no bizarre fanboy ethicism about sticking religiously to the Catwoman character as set out by DC Comics. After all, one of the great things about pulp characters is that they can be molded into new shapes, adapting with the times.

(4) It’s a shame Benjamin Bratt's character is so underwritten -- he and Berry have a palpable physical heat when they aren't pushing the square dialogue out of their round mouths.

(5) And finally: It seems to me that equating "empowerment" with misanthropic, narcissistic behavior got tired somewhere around the third Alanis Morissette album.

Also: Am I the only person who thought Halle Berry's Catwoman crouch-prowl unfortunately echoed a performance by another talented actress of color?



Posted: Fri - July 23, 2004 at 01:56 PM        

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