Amazon Prime Video has added an action fantasy film to its streaming menu with a mere 8% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes—ouch.
But at least now you can decide for yourself if it’s worthy of the shocking reviews, with its one redeeming factor being a stellar cast of A-listers.
Catwoman was released in 2004, with Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, Benjamin Bratt, Lambert Wilson, Frances Conroy, and Alex Borstein among its stars.
The American superhero film is loosely based on the original Catwoman character from DC Comics, following the life of Patience Phillips (Berry), a shy graphic designer working for cosmetics giant Hedare Beauty.
Ahead of the release of a groundbreaking anti-ageing product, Patience stumbles upon a huge conspiracy her employer is concealing, leading ultimately to her murder.
But when she is revived by an Egyptian Mau cat, Patience returns with feline abilities to become the crime-busting superheroine Catwoman.
The movie suffered an embarrassing flop upon release, making a loss by grossing $82.4million (£61m) against its $100m (£74m) budget.
Not only that, critics have been anything but kind to it—’catty’ is perhaps the most fitting word—branding it one of the worst films ever made. No, seriously, there’s a Wikipedia page titled ‘List of films considered the worst,’ and Catwoman is on it.
To add salt to the wound, Catwoman swept across awards season for all the wrong reasons, taking home not four Oscars, but rather four Golden Raspberries, including worst picture, worst director for Pitof, worst screenplay, and worst actress for Berry.
At the time, though, Berry, now 58, took it in her stride, even attending the Razzies in person to give an acceptance speech—best actress Academy Award for Monster’s Ball in hand, of course.
‘First of all, I want to thank Warner Bros,’ she said on the mic. ‘Thank you for putting me in a piece of s**t, god-awful movie … It was just what my career needed.’
Also in the aftermath of its release, Catwoman made Roger Ebert’s ‘most hated’ list, was declared ‘arguably the worst superhero film ever made’ by the Orlando Sentinel, and called ‘quite possibly’ one of the worst films ‘of all time’ by Jean Lowerison of the San Diego Metropolitan.
But it’s been over two decades, so let’s see what film critics in recent years have had to say…
On review aggregator RT, James Vance of Tulsa World wrote in 2014: ‘Halle Berry is a lovely woman with charisma to burn and definite acting ability — but even the best actors sometimes need to be told when they’re making fools of themselves.’
OK, perhaps not the best start.
‘Another hundred million dollars down the drain,’ stated Bruce Diones of The New Yorker.
‘A soulless amalgamation of quick edits, computer images and swooping, nausea-inducing dolly shots,’ said Associated Press journo Christy Lemire.
‘Catwoman is worse than bad — it’s boring. So boring it’s not even laughable,’ penned Matt Soergel of Florida Times-Union.
So, the consensus is that it’s a universally deplorable film, but there’s got to be something good about it?
While they may be in the minority, Film4’s Daniel Etherington argues it’s ‘not as bad’ as you might expect, calling it ‘daft and moderately entertaining.’
‘This hilarious, sexy, exciting farce is instead so consistently surprising and dazzling that I’m still not sure if it’s a good-bad movie or a good-good movie,’ mused Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid.
‘Much better than it had to be and a lot better than many Internet critics, eager to hate it, wanted it to be,’ added Rob Gonsalves from Rob’s Movie Vault in perhaps the most glowing review available.
Basically, it’s a film that people love to hate, and it’s so bad you want to watch it to see what all the criticism is about.
It’s also not the only low-rated film from Berry’s career, whose 2003 horror Gothika also has a 15% RT score.
Although it seems she looks back on her panned projects more fondly these days, posting a nude snap on Insta when Catwoman celebrated its 20th anniversary.
Her caption read: ‘It’s been 20 years today since I had the honor of bringing this iconic character to life. She will always be close to my heart and I will forever be Patience Phillips aka CATWOMAN!
‘Thank you @missjee79! When these black beauties showed up in my yard searching for their mother, Jee helped us through the rescue process. Forever grateful!’
Well, stream it for free with your Prime membership and let us know your verdict.
Catwoman is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
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