Halle Berry is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Catwoman with admirable poise.
The 2004 comic book movie was panned and earned Berry a Razzie for “Worst Actress,” but she disagreed with critics on “The Tonight Show” on Thursday, arguing that the film has found an entirely new audience these days.
“I loved it,” Berry told Jimmy Fallon, “but it got panned. The critics said it was awful. But it’s not that bad. I’ve gotten way worse reviews and the balls aren’t that bad.”
While audiences and social media users have undoubtedly used these words to describe the film before, professional critics have been a bit more eloquent in their reviews, slamming the cartoonish portrayal of Batman’s on-again, off-again ally as “very poorly made.”
“The director of Catwoman is a visual effects expert. [Jean-Cristophe] Pitof [Comar]”Star Wars doesn’t play by the rules of moviemaking,” Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern wrote in 2004. “Scenes that make sense? Nonsense. Characters with interior lives? Totally antiquated.”
Berry was admirably quick to embrace the response, accepting the Razzie Award in person, becoming the most famous celebrity to do so, and also recently posed topless with some cats to mark the film’s 20th anniversary.
The Oscar winner (2001’s Monster’s Ball) even claimed to have noticed a new appreciation for the film, which only grossed $82 million worldwide on a $100 million production budget, and used the buzzworthy title of Charli XCX’s latest album, “Brat,” to describe his changed perception as the film’s lead.
“What makes me happy is that kids are finding it on the Internet and they’re loving it,” Berry told Fallon. “So it’s just so validated. Now kids are saying it’s cool and what the hell did people have a problem with it. So I’m like, ‘I’m a really sassy person now.'”
In 2006, at Harvard University, Halle Berry acknowledged her ferocious reaction to the 2004 film “Catwoman.”
Suzuki Chitose/Associated Press
Naturally, Fallon couldn’t resist, cleverly labeling Berry a “Brat Woman.”
The film received an average review score of 8%, one of the lowest of Berry’s career, and although Catwoman’s storyline inexplicably revolved around the unethical manufacture of anti-aging skin cream, Berry claimed the reviews were worse than the film itself.
“People are free to discover for themselves without having to remember what the critics said,” she told Entertainment Weekly in July. “The younger generation doesn’t know what was said back then. They’re discovering for themselves and enjoying the value of it without being forced into a certain mindset.”
When asked if she’d reprise the role in the future, Berry didn’t flinch.
“If I could direct,” she declared Thursday.