Warner Bros.
Starring: Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Frances Conroy
Directed by: Pitof
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) is a meek, shy woman who is the victim of foul play but finds life anew when she is reincarnated into a Catwoman who must walk the line between good and evil.
Featured Feline: This is a cat-filled movie starting with the opening credits which shows the history of cats and catwomen alike. The lead cat in the film is an Egyptian Mau which first shows up outside Patience’s apartment sitting on the seat of a motorcycle.
The next day Patience sees the cat on a high ledge and tries to rescue it, ultimately requiring rescuing herself.
Cat Cattle Call: When Patience is killed, the Mau is present and numerous other cats appear, circling her lifeless body.
The Mau cat restores life to Patience as the other cats watch.
Patience is confused and later finds the cat in her apartment.
She takes the Mau cat to an address on the cat’s collar and meets Ophelia Powers (Frances Conroy) who owns numerous cats.
Ophelia explains that the female Mau cat’s name is Midnight and offers to help Patience, but Patience leaves in a disturbed state of mind. Later Patience returns and Ophelia explains what has happened to her.
Midnight is present when Patience makes the decision to embrace her new identity as Catwoman.
Midnight also appears when Patience is in prison and gives her the inspiration on how to escape.
According to online reports three Mau cats played the part of Midnight. The cat actors were provided by Boone’s Animals for Hollywood headed by Boone Narr. The filmmakers originally were planning to use CGI for much of the cat action but Boone’s cats were able to perform much of the action, minimizing the need for CGI cats (CGI was mostly used for Midnight when more detailed expressions were needed).
In the behind the scenes special on the DVD, Boone explained how in the scenes with multiple cat actors different cats were trained to enter with cues of different sounds so they could vary the cat action in the same shot.
Final Mewsings: No movie with this many cats can be considered a dog.
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