Crap-woman!

I'm tempted to end here in tribute to the "Shark Sandwich" review in Spinal Tap, but there's too much good stuff to tell you about.

The film stars Halle Berry's admirable torso as Catwoman, and Halle herself as Patience Phillips, a mousy artist for Hedare Cosmetics. But once Phillips gets flushed down the pipes (methinks director, Pitof, has watched The Fugitive one too many times) she's transformed into the sexy and morally ambiguous Catwoman. (To be honest, I might have gone with moral and sexually ambiguous instead, but that's just me.)

Along the way we meet Benjamin Bratt's Detective Tom Lone (which rhymes with "bone" Patience's girlfriend informs us) as the requisite ironic love interest, Lambert Wilson as the sinister/tiresome George Hedare, and Sharon Stone as femme banal Laurel Hedare.

The "story" revolves around an addictive skin cream that has horrible consequences should consumers stop using it. No, seriously. That's it - evil skin cream. But to be fair, the movie's not really about the story now is it.

Catwoman is about breasts, booty and lots of them! There's plenty of sexy walking, running, jumping and bending over, and all in a skin tight leather "costume" that leaves little to the imagination.

(Public Service Announcement: Berry puts on the outfit about 51:29 in...)

Yet, sadly, even this doesn't help the movie. For the 10-15 minutes of brown sugar, you have to endure Berry hissing at dogs, eating fish and other cat-isms that are so bad that they're not even laughable.

There's also a lot of really bad CG that's just plain silly. There's a lot of fast cuts throughout the effects shots that try to cover it up, but it's still piss poor.

I rented Batman Returns and watched Michelle Pfeiffer for some comparison in both costume and attitude and I gotta tell ya, Pfeiffer wins hands down. The skipping jump rope whip, the gleeful sensuality, the breathless post-somersault "Meow"... Heck, Lee Meriwether's Comrade Kitanya 'Kitka' Irenya Tantanya Karenska Alisoff in Batman: The Movie is better than Berry.

For fun I also watched Catwoman while my wife graded papers in the same room and kept track of how many times my wife said "you have got to be kidding me!" In 104 minutes I counted 11 outbursts. That's pretty much every ten minutes for those of you without an abacus.

Anyway, by the end we get to see Halle and Sharon in a kung-fu slap fight and Catwoman find her way in a man's world.

If you're using Netflix or Blockbuster's equivalent, it might be worth about 10 minutes of your time for the outfit, but certainly don't let this black cat cross your rental path.

Mark Anderson is a professional cartoonist whose family and business cartoons appear in publications nationwide.