Trolling #35: Catwoman RULES!

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. 

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