Catwoman (2004)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice came out this week.  The two biggest heroes in DC Comics history were put into the same movie, along with Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash.  There are other DC characters that didn’t make it into the movie.  They are minor characters for each of the heroes involved.  Just look at Batman’s villains.  There are so many of them that tossing them all into one movie would feel more like a list than an actual story.  That’s why we don’t get to see the likes of Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, or Catwoman.

This week’s movie ties into the whole superhero theme, specifically the DC Comics side of things.  If I want to tie it in even more, I could say that this week’s movie is related to Batman.  The movie is Catwoman, that 2004 Halle Berry movie where she wasn’t Selena Kyle, but was still Catwoman.

Catwoman was suggested to me on Twitter, but it wasn’t until the perfect combination of events happened that I decided to include it in the schedule.  It was a suggestion so that’s already a point in its favour.  Batman v Superman was coming out and it was related to a new release.  That’s another point.  Then someone I know handed me a copy and told me to watch it.  So, let’s recap.  I had a copy, had been told to watch it multiple times, and had the perfect time to write about it.  That’s how this came about.

My initial idea was to watch Catwoman once a month for seven months.  I’m sadistic like that.  That didn’t happen.  I watched it once in September and didn’t watch it again until recently.  I have a bunch of notes from the first time I watched it.  Most of that is play by play of the movie with me questioning what was happening.  I want to incorporate that into this post.

What I’m going to do is take those notes and expand on them with this newer viewing.  I’m going to clean up what was already there.  This might end up being a terrible post, but I won’t know until I’ve tried this idea.  Why don’t you come along for the ride with me?  We’ll see how this whole thing works out.

When I turned on the movie for the first time, I was surprised by the opening credits.  “The opening credits of Catwoman show a history of cats.  That’s an interesting concept … since Catwoman is supposed to be a cat burglar and not a reincarnation of an Egyptian cat.”  The movie would later delve into the Egyptian lore as a background for the concept of Catwoman.  This was an interesting idea for the background, but changes the character of Catwoman.  There have apparently been many Catwomen through the years, dating back to ancient Egypt.

Another big change in the main character was her name.  Selina Kyle is the name normally associated with Catwoman.  In this movie, “Halle Berry’s name is Patience Phillips.”  I caught that quickly.  This renders the credit of the movie being based on characters by Bob Kane meaningless.  This was not his character.  This was a rip-off.

One of my early notes was “Hoobastank.  I hear Hoobastank.  Remember Hoobastank?”  This was in reference to one of their songs, Same Direction, playing near the start of the movie.  Nowadays, if they are included in a soundtrack it is for nostalgic or ironic reasons.  It is never because the filmmakers think that it is a fitting choice for the action.  Back in 2004, when Catwoman was made, all superhero movies had music like this.  Spider-Man and Daredevil featured Nickelback or members of Nickelback.  Spider-Man 2 featured Dashboard Confessional.  Fantastic Four had Velvet Revolver.  It was a time of mainstream rock that nobody really cares about now.

Introductions are very important.  If a character is crucial to the story, their introduction sets them up.  You learn their name, personality traits, and a little bit of their background.  One thing that I never caught the first time through Catwoman was the name of Benjamin Bratt’s character.  “She’s now playing against Benjamin Bratt …” “… Mr. Benjamin Bratt Detective …” “Benjamin Bratt Detective figured it out!”  “If Benjamin Bratt Detective and Patience were to have sex, would it count as necrophilia?” It is Tom Loan (Lone? Lown? Loane?).  That weird necrophilia question is related to the voiceover that Patience had at the beginning of the film.

I did not like the voiceover.  “Halle Berry’s voiceover sounds like a whisper while she’s falling asleep, and she is being drowned out by the music playing in the movie.” “All I caught is that the day she died was the day she started to live.  That’s a dumb line in a movie that isn’t about ghosts.”  The voiceover was way too laid back.  There should be energy in it because the movie should be energetic.

There was a little more energy to Patience’s friend Sally.  Sally, played by Alex Borstein, ends up in the hospital due to migraines.  “The hospital stuff pays off with the reveal that Sally is getting sick from the makeup that Patience used to advertise.”  This was a very important plot point as the makeup was the crux of the movie’s conflict.  The reason that Patience was killed and turned into Catwoman was because she discovered the problem with the makeup.  The villain’s motivation was to release the makeup to the public.  The rest of the hospital stuff was standard buddy comedy that didn’t work.  “Sally is sitting at the nurses’ desk, talking on the phone to Patience … Then Sally hangs up to hit on the doctor.”

Another thing that didn’t work was the CGI throughout Catwoman.  During both watches, I had issues with the computer generated stuff.  “That was one terrible looking CG cat that the camera just moved onto.”  It was the cat that primarily bothered me.  Instead of using a real cat, many of the scenes in Catwoman resorted to a poorly rendered computer animated feline.  “Bad CG cat just meowed in Patience’s face and she came back to life.”  The movie didn’t stop with the cat.  The main character was frequently poorly animated as well.  “Oh, now we’ve got bad CG Halle Berry.”  The effects were just plain bad.

The final bad thing that to highlight is the terrible costume.  I understand the thinking behind making the Catwoman costume sexy.  Many men do not think of women as equals, and won’t find them believable stars in superhero movies.  Those guys are jerks who will only watch a female driven action movie if the female is sexually stimulating.  Pitof played into these sensibilities.  “Patience is wearing leather and using a whip.  This is some sort of sexual fantasy played out by director Pitof.” A superhero should not be using their suit to fulfill a sexual fantasy.  I would explain that right now, but my past-self summed it up nicely.  “The catsuit keeps getting ‘sexier.’  That’s not a good thing, since it looks plain goofy now, with less actual suit and more skin.  The suit isn’t supposed to just look good.  It’s supposed to be some form of protection as well.”  Superhero costumes are supposed to aid the superhero.  Spider-Man’s suit keeps his identity secret.  Batman’s suit has the utility belt and is also protective armor.  Iron-Man’s suit is both armor and weapon.  There is no protection in what Catwoman wears.  It’s barely clothing.

Let’s move from the bad of Catwoman to the good.  There isn’t much good that could be mined out of the movie.  It is mostly bad.  So what good did I find?  You might be asking yourself that.  Well, here it is.

There is exactly one thing in Catwoman that I would label as a good detail.  Let the me of seven months ago explain it for you.  “One thing the movie got right: after Patience Phillips is resurrected by the cats, she acts just like a cat and doesn’t give a damn about what anyone else thinks.  She does her own thing.  Just like a cat.”  Forget the jumping on random pieces of furniture.  Forget the landing on her hands and feet at all times.  The thing they got right was and having Patience get the attitude of a cat.

Before I finish with Catwoman, I want to share a few of my in the moment reactions.  In my initial writing about the movie, there were a lot of thoughts about what was happening.  That’s the stuff I have above.  But then there were things that I wrote that were just my reactions.  They were those moments that I couldn’t believe were actually happening.  So the next little bit of this post is just stuff that I wrote down in that initial notes, without any elaboration.

“’She jumps around like a cat.  We should call her Cat Chick.  No!  Cat Broad!’  No.  Just… No.  Bad dialogue.  Bad.”

“Catwoman just surfed on a guy.”

“Being like a cat can apparently make you good at basketball.  Though, Patience jumped off the wall with the ball, so that should be out of bounds.  She’s now playing against Benjamin Bratt, the police officer who was also in Miss Congeniality, while a bunch of kids watch and cheer.  This scene is edited like a bad music video.”

“There’s some cosmetics conspiracy hijinks going on now.  Halle Berry snuck into the warehouse, or factory, or something.  She is now being chased by men with guns.  I’m not entirely sure what’s happening in this movie right now.  She went in a waste pipe now, and they’re about to kill her with waste.  So, yeah.  This is a thing that happened in a movie one time.”

“So, Patience is breaking into a house.  The music makes it sound like she’s got a pizza and there’s a college girl waiting for the big sausage.  Bow chicka wow wow.”

“What if this movie was about Catwoman doing heists until her body decayed because she died?”

“Catwoman does a lot of dodging bullets.  She’s like that kid you would play with as a child, where you’d be imagining a fight and you’d say ‘I’m going to punch you in the face’ and his only reply to anything was ‘I’ll dodge it.’”

So there you have it.  A post using things I had written in that initial rough set of notes seven months ago.  It turned out better than I thought it would, but it’s not as great as I hoped.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  This experience will only help me to put out something better next time.

Catwoman was not a good movie.  There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.  There were very few redeemable things in it, so much so that I could only find one thing to praise.  For a movie produced in the studio system, it was an astonishing work of incompetency.  There had to have been better ideas for this movie.  We’ll never know.  This was what we got, and it was a disaster.

Less of a disaster are my notes:

• Catwoman was suggested for the Sunday “Bad” Movies by @ER_NotR.  He also suggested Birdemic and Steel.
• I mentioned the 2004 version of Fantastic Four in the post.  I have covered the 2015 version, Fant4stic.
• The star of Catwoman, Halle Berry, has already been featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies twice.  She was in both New Year's Eve and Die Another Day.
• Another third timer is Ona Grauer who has been in House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark.
• Dagmar Midcap and Peter Wingfield are both making their second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearances after being in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.
• Catwoman also sees the return of two Stan Helsing actors, James Ashcroft and Holly Eglington.
• John Cassini is returning to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week.  He was previously in Repeaters.
• Aaron Douglas has already been featured in Ghost Storm.  Now he is featured in Catwoman.
• Finally, another Alone in the Dark alum returned this week.  Michael P. Northey was in Catwoman.
• Have you seen Catwoman?  Is it one of the worst superhero movies you’ve ever seen?  Share your thoughts in the comments.
• What bad movies do you know?  Do you want them featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies?  You can use the comments to tell me what movies, or let me know on Twitter.
• I have also been snapchatting clips from the bad movies I watch.  Feel free to check me out at jurassicgriffin on snapchat.
• Next week, I’m actually going to be covering two movies.  I know it’s not one of the tens for the week.  It’s week 175.  The two movies aren’t a franchise, though.  The main focus of the week will be Troll 2, a classic bad film that you should know about if you’re interested in bad movies.  There’s really nothing like it.  It is perfection.  The second movie is a documentary about Troll 2 called Best Worst Movie.  So, really, the documentary is just a bonus post like that time when I wrote about the book The Disaster Artist.  I won’t be counting the documentary into statistics or anything.  It’s going to be a fun week.  I’ll see you for that double feature with two posts.

Cabin Boy (1994) and My Issues with The Golden Raspberry Awards

When I’m scheduling for future Sunday “Bad” Movies, I always ask for suggestions.  They are a way for me to find bad movies that I might not have noticed.  Having the input of various people can broaden the types of movies I watch, allowing me to find hidden gems I might not have known otherwise.  Including suggestions in the movies I choose helped me find some of my favourite bad movies.

This week, I watched Cabin Boy on a suggestion.  The 1994 film was about finishing school graduate Nathanial Mayweather (Chris Elliott) who boarded the wrong boat while trying to get to Hawaii.  The fishing boat was populated by Captain Greybar (Ritch Brinkley), his three workers Paps (James Gammon), Skunk (Brian Doyle-Murray), and Big Teddy (Brion James), and his cabin boy Kenny (Andy Richter).  When Nathanial convinced Kenny to set the fishing boat on course to Hawaii, they ended up going through Hell’s Bucket, a dangerous part of the ocean filled with monsters and mysterious creatures.

When the movie was released, it was critically panned.  It’s not a good movie.  Chris Elliott was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award as the Worst New Star for his performance.  This brings me to what I want to discuss.  Let’s get into the Golden Raspberry Awards.

The Golden Raspberry Awards, commonly called the Razzies, is an awards ceremony meant to celebrate the worst in film.  It was established in 1980 by John J.B. Wilson to honor the worst movies of that year.  The first ceremony was held on March 31^st of the next year.  As of this year, there have been thirty-six ceremonies, including four ceremonies (10^th, 20^th, 25^th, and 30^th) with anniversary specific awards.

On a surface level, I should appreciate the Golden Raspberry Awards for highlighting the worst in cinema.  That’s what I do with the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I watch bad movies and celebrate what they can do for viewers, filmmakers, and other movies.  In earlier posts, I included Razzie nominations and wins in the notes because people might be interested in that information.  But I’ve grown wary of the awards over the years for various reasons.

The main reason is that The Golden Raspberry Awards have become predictable.  The opinionated side of me wants to say that they are more of a popularity contest than an objective look at bad cinema.  Adam Sandler is a staple of the awards, being nominated for Worst Actor the past five years.  The people associated with the Twilight films have also managed to find an almost permanent spot in the nominations.  The awards have become more about who the general population has deemed bad than who actually is bad.

Adam Sandler, for example, has a snowball effect happening.  He isn’t the performer that he used to be.  I can agree to that.  He had an energy in the 90s when he was on Saturday Night Live and making movies like Billy Madison, Big Daddy, and Happy Gilmore.  That hasn’t been present for nearly a decade.  After making Funny People, a movie that took shots at the kind of movies he had been making, he returned to making that kind of movie.  His movies aren’t necessarily terrible (Jack and Jill aside), but people seem to be heaping the hate all over them because of how unenergetic his performances are.  With each subsequent movie he releases, more people are crying out that he has made the worst abomination to ever happen to cinema.  The hate grows with each of his releases.  Pixels is better than most of his other recent movies.  You wouldn’t know that from the slander it got for simply being an Adam Sandler movie.

To my point of The Razzies being a popularity contest (or unpopularity, depending on how you look at it), this year saw two Worst Picture winners.  Instead of picking between the nominees, they chose to put two movies in the top (or bottom) spot.  Fifty Shades of Grey was one of the most maligned movies for many reasons.  It mostly had to do with the stigma surrounding the subject matter and the book it was based on.  The other movie was Fant4stic, which I covered last week.  They may have been two of the worst movies of the year; however, the concept of Worst Picture is meant to be decisive.  Choosing two movies is indecisive, and only allows for more people to think their claims of worst movie are justified.

But let me take a look at one of the other movies nominated for Worst Picture.  I’ve brought Pixels up already.  Critically, that wasn’t even the worst Adam Sandler movie of the year.  The only reason that it makes the Worst Movies list over The Cobbler is because more people saw it.  Thus, we come to the strongest point for The Razzies being a popularity contest.  All of the movies that get nominated in the big awards are wide release movies.  The few exceptions are movies tacked onto another nomination for a more well-known movie.  The Cobbler was part of Adam Sandler’s nomination for Worst Actor, after Pixels was already credited.  At the 34^th Golden Raspberry awards, Diana was tacked onto a Worst Actress nomination for Naomi Watts beside a nomination for the more well-known Movie 43.

The Golden Raspberries are not afraid to nominate someone for multiple roles in a year, under a single nomination.  Why?  Probably to fit more movies into their awards and get more people interested.  Rather than actually care about quality assurance, they’ll nominate Kelsey Grammer for Worst Supporting Actor and toss all four of his film appearances from 2014 into that nomination.  Is he that bad in The Expendables 3?  Nope.  But they’ll put that into his nomination in the hopes that people who disliked The Expendables 3 will seek out The Razzies.  Plus, nominating him once for everything will leave space for other people to be nominated.

Yet there is one thing that outweighs everything when it comes to the lack of credibility for The Golden Raspberry Awards.  Besides their big awards for worst in acting, directing, and in general, the people behind the awards like to make joke categories and joke nominations.  For last year’s crop of movies, the nominees for Worst Screen Combo included Kevin James and his glued on mustache or Segway in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.  That is not a serious nomination.  That is the awards forcing Paul Blart into a category that it should not be in.  (Okay, maybe it should be in there for the daughter and her love interest. That’s not the point.)  That category used to be called Worst Screen Couple, which would get rid of joke nominations like that.  For the 28^th Golden Raspberry Awards, there was a category called Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie.  They’re just jumping on people moaning about how bad the genre was doing.  They did the same thing three years later with 3-D movies.

Turn your attention to 1995 now.  The Golden Raspberry Awards held their 15^th ceremony, celebrating the worst of 1994.  The category that Cabin Boy was nominated in was Worst New Star.  Here are the nominees.  Chris Elliott has his first starring role.  Anna Nicole Smith won for her second movie role ever.  Chris Isaak and Shaquille O’Neal were both nominated for whatever movie they were in.  Then there was Jim Carrey.  He had been in movies for a few years, mostly in supporting roles.  His starring roles all started coming around in 1994.  Thing is, they are all respected comedic performances now.  You’ve got The Mask, Ace Ventura, and Dumb and Dumber.  He was nominated for all three movies, none of which deserved a nomination.  Which brings me to…

The Golden Raspberry Awards are like the Academy Awards in a sense because they are fairly irrelevant a few years down the line.  The movies that are nominated are movies that might initially get a bad reputation (good in the case of the Oscars) and be popular at the time, but won’t have a lasting effect on cinema or will be seen differently later on.  For an example of a movie that won’t have a lasting effect, the 26^th Golden Raspberry Awards had a Worst Picture of Dirty Love.  Because I write about bad movies on a weekly basis, I’ve heard of this movie.  How many other people have?  It’s not a movie that has stayed in the cultural mindset.  However, when you look at some of the other nominees, you see Son of the Mask, and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.  These two movies have stood the test of time as bad movies and have held an influence over movies.  Then there is the whole nominating a movie or performance, only to have it be respected in later years.  In the first ever Golden Raspberry Awards, Shelley Duvall was nominated as Worst Actress for The Shining.  This was a role that she would later be respected for in a movie that would be seen as a masterpiece.  Stanley Kubrick was nominated for Worst Director as well.  Things change.  Opinions change.

For all of these reasons, I have become opposed to The Golden Raspberry Awards.  Though I am of the mindset that bad movies might be more important in making good movies than good movies are, I’d rather make note of that in a more legitimate way.  Making jokes and not taking the awards show seriously is a disservice to bad movies, good movies, and movie audiences.  The Golden Raspberries make a mockery of awards shows while masquerading as one to be treated with respect.  They should earn the respect with a thoughtful analyzation of bad movies rather than being a bandwagon jumping awards mess.

Now for the real question.  I haven’t written much about Cabin Boy, even though it is this week’s movie.  Did it deserve the nomination that it got for Worst New Star?  I don’t know.  Chris Elliott wasn’t all that bad.  It was his role that was bad.  The character was an insufferable ass.  But Chris Elliott performed that role well enough.  Had the writing of the movie been better, making his character a more likeable goofball, we probably wouldn’t even be talking about it.  There were good ideas in the movie marred by shoddy writing.

Cabin Boy is a suggestion that I do not regret watching.  Like many predecessors in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, it has a unique spin to it that makes it a worthwhile watch.  It justifies why I take suggestions.  They give me interesting movies that I otherwise would not have watched (in most cases).  They broaden my viewing spectre and fill some of my blind spots.  I will always be thankful to the people who suggest movies.  Thank you.

I’m also thankful to the people who read my notes:

• Cabin Boy was suggested by @ImPABLO_i_WRITE, who has frequently been a supporter of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Mike Starr was in Cabin Boy.  He was also in Baby’s Day Out.
• Cabin Boy featured Ann Magnuson, who was also in Glitter.
• Some of the more interesting suggestions I’ve had, based on the movies being different than most, are Attack of the Super Monsters, Monster Brawl, Robo Vampire, and Science Crazed.
• I mentioned Fant4stic in the post.
• How do you feel about The Golden Raspberries?  How do you feel about Cabin Boy?  How do you feel about The Shining getting nominated as a bad movie?  There is a comments section below if you want to discuss any of this.
• If you have a bad movie that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, feel free to drop that title into the comments below.  You can also tell me on Twitter if that is your prerogative.
• Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I use my snapchat (jurassicgriffin) to share my experience.  Go ahead and follow that account if you want to see clips from bad movies.
• Next week I’ll be watching Catwoman for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, in honour of the release of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.  Halle Berry in a poorly made leather sexy suit that I didn’t really like.  My thoughts will go up next week.  See you then.