This is my favorite comic book movie of all time. Apart from The Fantastic Four, it's the only one that gave me the same kind of square, giddy delight comics themselves used to, when I was young enough to be steeped in them, and before they became "graphic novels" and gained academic approval. It also recalled the kindred simple pleasures of the early James Bond films. More than any other picturization of a superhero, and especially in contrast to the Spider-Man series, Catwoman follows through on its central fantasy: to suddenly have superpowers and to find out how to use them. The movie shows you how it would feel to be a superhero, and leads you to imagine yourself as one. But it's only for people who want to surrender to that fantasy, not those who are set on holding back and feeling superior to it. In other words, it's for kids, not people trying to be grown-ups. But apparently many former children who haven't quite managed to put away childish things have cast off the only ones that mattered; and so they rejected this movie en masse. But I was content to let it bear me whither it would, and this it was able to do easily, since it has a spry, catlike grace of its own, and a rich, posterlike beauty besides. Not to overlook Halle Berry: although she did some dissing of the movie after the fact, by the evidence on screen she was fully immersed in the fantasy, and fully enjoying it. Cultural forecasts are always risky, but I predict that in twenty years' time, when some of the people who first experienced this movie when they were too young to resist it begin writing about movies, Catwoman will acquire a reputation more in accord with its deserts.
Review of Catwoman
