Alternative Character Interpretation: Tom, the detective, is established as being completely oblivious to the fact that his girlfriend and Catwoman are the same person. But it's very possible that he knew they were the same person all along before The Reveal. This is most evident by his serious investigation to find out if Patience and Catwoman are the same person and subsequent disappointment after learning the truth.
The basketball scene has "Scandalous" by Mis-Teeq played over it. It's widely considered to be the group's best song and was a hit in the group's native UK - enough that many fans even forget it appeared in this movie. Some would say it comes close to making the basketball scene watchable.
The main theme for the movie, "Who's in Control" by Natasha Shneider is a song that's considered to be better than the film itself by some.
Best Known for the Fanservice: It was clear that the film was riding on Halle Berry's star power and sex appeal to win over audiences, made even more so with the unforgettably stripper-esque catsuit. As brilliantly summed up by Roger Ebert:
"Catwoman is a movie about Halle Berry's beauty, sex appeal, figure, eyes, lips and costume design. It gets those right. Everything else is secondary, except for the plot, which is tertiary."
Bile Fascination: One has to watch the film to get why people poke fun at it.
Complete Monster: Laurel Hedare is the scheming wife of Hedare Enterprises' CEO, George Hedare, who proves herself to be leagues worse than her husband. To obtain more money, she produces a skin care product called Beau-line, which has some side effects that make a woman's skin turn into living marble if it is used constantly and can also cause a woman's face to get disfigured if the usage is discontinued. After one of her employees, Patience Phillips accidentally overhears her plan, Laurel then orders her top henchmen to murder Patience to prevent the information from leaking out. After Patience becomes an Anti-Hero known as the Catwoman and tries to find the truth about her death, Laurel then tricks her under the pretense that her husband wants her dead. After Patience finds out the truth, she kills both her husband and a scientist, Dr. Ivan Slavicky, in order to frame Catwoman, and tries to ship the Beau-line products across the world.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Not for any actor or character, but for a stunt double. Legendary stuntwoman Zoë Bell performed the stunts for Sharon Stone and her work on Xena is put to good use.
Fetish Retardant: Everything about Patience's look is considered to be a prime example of trying too hard to be sexy, and failing horribly. The film puts Halle Berry in a Stripperiffic version of the heroine's comic book outfit. But it's so skimpy it looks more like bondage gear, and thus it's slightly uncomfortable to look at. Additionally, Patience gets a radical makeover that gives her an unflattering hairstyle, too much make-up, and another black leather Spy Catsuit. Yes, the movie decided that Halle Berry needed a makeover.
Fridge Brilliance: Many people pointed out that Patience's boyfriend Tom was an incompetent cop who made a simple investigation needlessly overcomplicated. However, since Tom went to great lengths to see if Patience and Catwoman were the same person it's very possible he took his time solving the case because he didn't want to learn the truth. He was afraid of the possibility that the love of his life was a notorious criminal, so he went to extreme lengths to see if it was true because he feared destroying his relationship with her.
Girl-Show Ghetto: This movie's failure, along with that of Elektra, was long used by studios as a justification that female-led action fare didn't sell, at least in the 2000s. It took the Box Office successes of The Hunger Games, Snow White & the Huntsman and Divergent in The New '10s to finally shake that thinking off. In addition, critics were swift to point out that the villain's evil scheme involving killer make-up is ridiculously sexist for a movie that marketed itself as being empowering to women.
Ham and Cheese: Frances Conroy seemed to realize what kind of movie she was in and hammed it up delightfully to make Ophelia Powers seem even more nuts. She looks like she's enjoying making an Oscar-winning actress go mad for catnip.
Hollywood Homely: We're supposed to believe pre-transformation Patience is a frumpy plain jane who's ignored by everyone as if Halle Berry is any less beautiful in baggy clothes and frizzy hair. Some fans even think she looks better that way.
Just Here for Godzilla: Although the film was aimed at women, most people who watched it were neither female nor doing it for any other reason than Fanservice. Another of the few redeeming qualities of the film is its choreography, which mixes all the fanservice with surprisingly neat Capoeira.
Ophelia Powers's "male academia" is sometimes used to underline the ratio of male to female writers in film or other media. Lindsay Ellis previously used it to illustrate the Girl-Show Ghetto regarding female superhero movies.
Moe: Patience Phillips definitely qualifies in the movie’s first half. She’s a dorky but sweet aspiring artist who’s too meek to stand up to anyone, whether it be her boss or her loud neighbors, she’s endearingly awkward in her everyday life, and her reaction to Tom’s interest in her is adorable. Then there's her loving nature toward cats even before becoming Catwoman. Downplayed in the movie’s second half where she becomes more confident and sexually assertive as Catwoman, though she does still have some cute moments even after this.
Moment of Awesome: A now super confident Patience putting the obnoxious neighbors in their place for partying too loud at night.
Moral Event Horizon: The security guards pass it by flooding the sewer pipe with Patience still inside of it in order to kill her.
The villains being a cosmetics corporation planning to sell toxic skin cream. The film tries so hard to make an example against sexism that this story choice can be hard to take seriously, as it makes it look like the writers still didn't believe a female audience would get into a plot unrelated to stereotypically feminine interests.
The movie's utterly chaotic editing, with its awkward Reaction Shots and overload of jump cuts that take the viewer right out of the scene. The worst examples of this is an early scene with Dr. Ivan Slavicky looking at the effects of the cosmetic with several pointless jump cuts on the same subject with slight alterations, or during the final battle between Catwoman and Laurel when the latter stabs Patience in the hip with a glass shard and we get TWO different reaction takes of her super narm-y pained scream in an extreme close-up. Do NOT make a Drinking Game out of every bizarre edit that happens in 5 minutes of this movie, it's a death sentence.
Patience proclaims, "I may not be a hero, but I'm not a killer," literally seconds after killing Laurel. It's such a weird disconnect that you have to wonder if the ending originally had her Save the Villain, and then they just forgot to take that line out when they changed it.
The basketball scene is infamous for being so unintentionally weird that it ends up being hilarious. It starts with a random kid on a basketball court offering his ball to Patience for a "one-on-one" game (no, not because he wants to play her—because he wants to watch her play against Tom), and it features (among other things) Patience and Tom flirtatiously bumping butts in front of a crowd of cheering children, ultimately ending with Patience making a slam dunk from across the court and somehow winding up straddling Tom in the middle of the court in full view of the kids—prompting one of them to meekly ask "Can we have our ball back?" It shouldn't be possible to make a basketball game that bizarre, but (somehow) they found a way.
Narm Charm: While the film is nigh-impossible to take seriously, most of its ridiculousness and over-the-top, Berry-centric titillation is clearly very intentional and doesn't intend to be anything else. With that idea in mind, it is possible to enjoy the film as if it were just a particularly bizarre, overbudgeted vigilante/martial arts flick (and even some of those who aren't interested in leather or spinning kicks might find it just plain So Bad, It's Good).
Every single scene with the CGI Patience is terrible. And they did a lot of CGI. It was so bad that they caked makeup on Halle Berry's skin in an attempt to make it look as texture-less as the CGI version.
It gets no better with the cityscape or with many of the cats featured onscreen, both of whom are also frequently seen in CGI.
When Catwoman lets Laurel fall to her death, Sharon Stone is very clearly replaced by a dummy as she tumbles down.
Tying in with the Batman Returns parallels, Patience's Character Development actually inverts that of Selina's — while Selina's "rebirth" as Catwoman caused her to tragically spiral out of control, Patience briefly faces a similar crisis of self, with her shy "normal" self creating dissonance with her newfound confidence and desire for excitement. Sadly, the film doesn't do much with this dynamic after introducing it — instead of a genuine internal conflict, the movie opts to play it more as Patience overcoming a potential Split-Personality Takeover, which doesn't tie in with any of her actual personal desires, including that of being an (anti-)hero.
As mentioned in Narm above, replacing the make-up with medicine or drugs would've hardly changed the plot (and it would have made much more sense if it was drugs, since Patience wouldn't have been able to sit back and let the police and authorities sort it out) and would've made it less sexist to boot.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: Most critics were unanimous in that, costume, mannerisms, and the film itself aside, Halle Berry really tried her best with the role, despite the fact that she was doing this film out of contractual reasons and was likely aware of how it would turn out (she even lampshaded this by accepting her Razzie Award in person and joking about how bad the movie was). Her choreographer Anne Fletcher also did the same with the fight scenes.
This movie was supposed to appeal to both fans of the character from the comic and a female audience as well. Unfortunately, fans were put off by the unnecessary changes made to the character and setting, along with the nonsensical story and laughably bad acting, while the sexualization of the character made it seem like it was aimed more at men than any potential female audience. In the end, the movie failed to find any audience and bombed at the box office.
Advertisements at the time hyped up the fact that this was a completely new Catwoman not connected to previous Batman films, TV shows, or the original comics. Well, then why should we see it?
Sally. Although witty and a good friend to Patience, her compliments towards the men in the workplace come off as very creepy.
Unnecessary Makeover: The movie decided that Halle Berry of all people needed a makeover, doing this trope twice over.
As Patience, she dons even more make-up, cutting her hair drastically short and donning a tight black leather outfit. The make-up puts her in the Unintentional Uncanny Valley, the haircut screams "early 2000s" and the main outfit she takes is Fetish Retardant. Patience looks far cuter before the ridiculously sexualized makeover.
As Catwoman, her Beta Outfit is considered to be far more appropriate (in more ways than one) for the character. Admittedly it's just a leather jacket, tight black pants, and a Domino Mask (she lacks any cat ears), yet many find it far more attractive and evocative of the character than the stripperiffic garb she immediately ditches it for.
WTH, Costuming Department?: Halle Berry's rather stripper-esque leather ensemble, enlarged cat ears, and high-heeled sandals were singled out as such by many viewers and critics. The hat in particular was often compared to a Mickey Mouse cap.
