Let me just start off with a modest proposal: that everyone involved in making of this film be dragged out onto the streets and shot, both to prevent even the possibility of a sequel being made, and as a warning to anyone considering making a movie this bad ever again. And yes, it really is that bad.

Catwoman, as you probably know, is a DC comic book character who originally appeared in the pages of Batman several decades ago. Over the years the sometime-foe, sometime-comrade of the caped crusader has been memorably rendered on television, by Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt, and more recently by Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns. A Catwoman project has been kicked around for years in Hollywood and now finally Warner Bros. has coughed one up. Unfortunately this isn’t classic Catwoman character Selina Kyle, but rather a whole new person named Patience Phillips (Berry) so that means no Batman, no Tim Burton, and apparently no brains either.

What we do have is a director named Pitof (which I’m guessing is French for Joel Schumacher), a lousy script, a horrendous supporting cast, and Halle Berry making a damn fool out of herself.

The story starts off by introducing us to Patience, a commercial artist for a giant cosmetics firm, Hedare, that’s about to release a dangerous new anti-aging cream. Patience accidentally finds out the truth about the product’s side effects and is promptly killed by the some of the cosmetics company’s gun-toting goons. Luckily for Patience, she has an unknown benefactor in the form of an ancient cat god who has chosen her to become the new Catwoman.

So now the hitherto mild-mannered Patience is transformed into the vivacious Catwoman. She has the speed and strength of a cat, as well as a love for catnip, cat food, milk, and staring at fish. Yes, there are some rather lame attempts at humor over her literally being a Catwoman, but unfortunately at no point does Halle give herself a bath with her tongue. As Catwoman, Patience sets out to avenge her death and expose the side effects of Hedare’s new aging cream (BTW those side effects are that it’s addictive, toxic, and it makes people almost totally invulnerable to injury. Hard to believe the FDA would overlook those sorts of details, but then again if the MPAA can certify this film fit for human consumption, I guess anything’s possible.)

From here the story proceeds exactly as you would imagine it. Catwoman fights some bad guys, then gets framed for murder; the cop put in charge of the Catwoman investigation just happens to be Patience’s tepid romantic interest (which leads to an unintentionally hilarious scene where they do a calligraphy/personality test). Patience goes to jail, but gets out to clear her name, and it ends with a goofy climactic fight with a nigh-invulnerable Sharon Stone.

There’s not one good thing about this film. Nothing is done well. The fight scenes are very choppily edited, the story is strictly by the numbers, and the cast is incredibly obnoxious. Particularly awful are Patience’s best friend Sally (Borstein), as an oversexed-in-the-city gal, and Lambert Wilson, who affects a terrible British accent to play the hissably snide owner of Hedare, in a performance that I found even more annoying than his Merovingian in the Matrix films. Still, special scorn has to reserved for the screenwriters who actually wrote the cringe-worthy dialogue and crafted this remarkably stupid story in what I suspect might have been a conscious effort to try and top Batman And Robin for the title of dumbest comic book movie ever!

—Edward Rholes