Catwoman vs Sylvia

In the city of, um, City, crime is on the rise. Maybe. I guess it's not, but if crime decides to rise, then look out, Crime! There's a new cat in town! A cat…woman! That's right, Catwoman! So look out, you there, in Townsburg! For Catwoman is bringing sexy justice to your possibly soon-to-be crime-ridden streets!

Catwoman takes place in an unnamed, mostly digital and generic movie-set city. I make a point of this, because on The Late Show with David Letterman last week, Halle Berry made a point to say that Catwoman provides a less cartoony version of the character than we've seen before, and as if to illustrate this fact, it even takes place in a real city, as opposed to fictional, cartoony Gotham City. Those were her words, “real city.” Nope. Fake. Maybe Halle didn't see the movie. You'd think she would have skimmed the script though, right?

The makers of Catwoman either know very little of their audience or just plain don't like them, at least judging by the plot. They seem to think that because it's Cat-woman, then they have to have a slight, girly plot, about boys and make-up and “Catwoman comes with all these accessories, plus, hair you can brush!”

Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) is a put-upon graphic designer, not respected at work, with no social life to speak of. She pads around like an eight-year old, fidgeting with her oversized cuffs and pushing the hair out of her eyes. She has two friends, Sally and Wesley; I'll deal with those morons in a second. Patience is so pathetic that when she steps out on her ledge to rescue a cat, the cop on the sidewalk below (Benjamin Bratt) automatically assumes she's committing suicide. Patience works for a massive, nuclear power plant-sized cosmetics company, whose latest age-defying product—Beau-line—is about to be launched. (It's pronounced “bee-oh-leen” for no reason whatsoever.) The company is run by Sharon Stone and Lambert Wilson. Stone is seriously bored, but you can tell that maybe she got to keep her costumes or something, because she at least finishes the movie. Lambert Wilson got on my nerves in a huge way in the Matrix movies, and inexplicably, he plays only a slight variation on the character in Catwoman. Not good. Anyway, Beau-line is toxic and addictive. If you stop using it, you go crazy and head-achy and dead. If you never stop using it, your skin becomes…LIVING MARBLE! So, Patience finds out, and gets caught finding out, and they flush her out a giant waste pipe that no cosmetics company would have, but whatever. She's rescued by the cat she rescued earlier, only now it's quite obviously CGI.

So, Patience is alive again, only now she sleeps on a shelf, and her clothes fit better, and she gives herself a spikey haircut. Oh, and she becomes a jewel thief, and she speaks in a sluttier voice, and she wears too much lipstick.

And on and on. Of the modern comic book movies, Catwoman is the tackiest, and somehow also the most boring. Keep in mind, that the modern comic book movie era includes Batman and Robin (tacky) and Supergirl (boring). It has no visual style, other than three edits per second and gray sets. The actors are completely uninvolved; Halle Berry relishes playing Catwoman, to be sure, and she's sexy, but each scene plays like a self-contained moment, rather than a piece of a larger whole, and Berry reads many of her lines with a winky aren't-we-having-fun-being-bad tone that gives the movie a feeling similar to the movie spoofs they film for the MTV Movie Awards each year. Sure, Sarah Jessica Parker was funny spoofing The Matrix, but Sarah Jessica Parker wasn't actually in The Matrix, now was she?

I guess Halle Berry is bucking for icon status or something. It's weird that Storm, Jinx from Die Another Day, and Catwoman are all being played by the same actor in only a couple years. That's a lot of leather jumpsuits for one person. It's also an incredible amount of fluff for someone who, only three springs ago, was gripping her Oscar so tight I thought it might snap in two.

The sad part is, we all knew it was bad the minute we saw the costume. The Catwoman suit is ugly and awkward and should have been a clue. Catwoman was directed by Pitof, who only has one name. That should have been a clue. Catwoman was turned down by Nicole Kidman and Ashley Judd. That should have been a clue. They all but put it on the poster: “We didn't try very hard.” But I saw it anyway. And how was I rewarded? Here you go:

Alex Borstein plays Patience's best friend (she also has a mute gay friend at work, who claps and blinks and all but rollerskates in on a parade float holding a sign reading “stereotype.”). Borstein's performance and character are the most clichéd and annoying that I've seen in a movie this year. In fact, you'd have to go back to 1993 and Sliver to find a more grating presence on film (Sharon Stone's best friend in that one shall remain nameless, mostly because I can't bring myself to look her up.) Borstein plays a typical movie best friend: her wardrobe isn't as expensive as that of the lead actress, and she's horny and wacky and has all kinds of good advice and dating tips and wisecracks. Ugh. Let's put it this way, when Bratt's cop character stops by Patience's office to ask her out, Borstein pops up over her cubicle wall and Homer Simpson-whispers “Say yes!” Let's also put it this way: when Borstein's character gets sick from using Beau-line (a storyline of absolutely no consequence, proven by the movie's inability to wrap it up, or even deal with it in the first place), Patience visits and brings her a Hershey bar, which she can't tear into fast enough. All of this might be bearable if Borstein were the least bit funny, or even pleasant, but she's not. She mugs and hams like she's in a Mad TV sketch. The worst Mad TV sketch of all time. When other people (actually there's only one model on a video screen) use Beau-line, their faces deteriorate into scaly death-masks. Borstein just gets a headache, which goes away when she stops using the product. She's lucky. Mine didn't go away for about a week.

The advertisements for Catwoman made it seem like a cross between The Crow and the Michelle Pfeiffer scenes in Batman Returns. I should not have typed that previous sentence. It has depressed me beyond belief. Do not, under any circumstances, watch The Crow or Batman Returns within twenty-four hours of Catwoman. Get as far away as you can. Watch something quiet and slow and well-dressed. Watch Sylvia.

You probably hadn't planned on watching Sylvia, had you? Yeah, most of us don't. It's tough love though. You saw Catwoman, even after I told you not to, and now where are you? Depressed. It could be worse.

Sylvia tells the story of the writers Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. She's an American, studying at Cambridge, and they meet among books and words and poets. During that first meeting, Sylvia bites Ted on the cheek, which is so weird it must have actually happened. (Hey, wait a second! It's just like Catwoman and Benjamin Bratt! Face-biting! That's the connection between these movies! I knew I wasn't crazy!) Soon, they're together, and the movie finds its tone. Like A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia is set in a world where academia is considered a macho sport. In one scene, Ted and his friends take turns shouting lines of poetry while the others shout “Faster!” When Sylvia joins in, they're skeptical, but her recitation is so fast and bold I expected her to finish by saying “You just got served, bitch!”

Sylvia and Ted are played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig, respectively, and they're both good and believable as writers. Paltrow reads poetry in the movie as if she'd actually spent time reading some in her life. As in many of her other roles, Paltrow takes on an accent for Sylvia. This time it's sort of mid-Atlantic—not British, not American, not Gwyneth Paltrow. Craig is good too, but it should be noted that his voice is so deep, many of his lines sound like “Burr burr burr mmmm brrrr da-da, Sylvia.” You might need to raise the treble.

Of course, anyone familiar with Sylvia Plath knows she was never happy for any long stretches of time. She was mired in jealousy and paranoia over Ted's success and fidelity. As the movie continues, she becomes sadder and sadder, and her behavior lands half way between “Hey Sylvia, maybe a nap?” and downright unbearable. At times, I admit, I wanted things to open up more in Sylvia. It can be confusing at times, time-wise, and I wasn't always sure of the status of Ted and Sylvia's marriage. By the time Sylvia tapes the doors, I bought that she believed it was the only solution, but I probably could have used a couple more scenes to get there myself.

Gwyneth Paltrow, of course, was also, famously, crying and squeezing an Oscar a few years back. Like Berry, she's made some odd choices (karaoke with Huey Lewis springs to mind, as does stewardess school with Mike Myers), but she's made some really great movies too. Here's hoping that Halle Berry, on her quest for movie legend status, finds a Talented Mr. Ripley or The Royal Tenenbaums in there somewhere, amongst all the leather jumpsuits.

Catwoman: D
Sylvia: B