This movie plumbs the depths of hitherto unfathomable retardedness. This isn’t really news — I mean, hey, anybody who didn’t realize it was going to stink is probably a few clams short of a chowder.

But I like to watch big budget stinkers, and this one obliges me to make a few comments:

First of all, I’m upset that she didn’t become Catwoman after getting bit by a radioactive cat. That would have been a nice twist, and radioactive animals are so hot right now. This is not my major beef, however.

Nor is the fact that Halle Berry acting like a cat is one of the stupidest things ever committed to film. First of all, what’s with all the squatting? She prances around her apartment, and then she stops and squats there. Do cats squat? I’m not much of a cat person, but I think they only do that in their litter box.

She hisses at dogs, and she can’t control herself around fish, and she makes a lot of purring kinds of sounds.. Ok, she’s a cat — whatever. Like I said, this is not my major beef. It’s just stupid, and she’s not very good at it.

There’s one scene where she randomly gets roped into playing basketball with this guy that likes her. He doesn’t realize she’s a cat, and in fact, she doesn’t quite realize this yet either. This is an obligatory discovering new powers scene. In this case, her newly discovered power — inherited from a cat, mind you — is the ability to play basketball.

She double-dribbled a lot. I guess that was to show that knowledge of the rules of basketball were not also passed on to her by the cat. That would have been silly.

OK, so the plot is stupid. That has been established, and it’s no surprise. But this isn’t my major beef either.

The worst thing about this movie is the soundtrack. It alternates between an orchestral superhero-score-by-numbers and simply nauseating urban soul crap.

I’m teetering on the brink of cultural insensitivity here, but I have to say this because it seems like a trend:

Just because the main actor in a movie is black doesn’t mean the soundtrack has to be a hip-hop cliche.

This movie, and some others recently — Shark Tale comes to mind — seem like they grafted urban elements onto a movie just because they found a black guy to be the main character.

Has anybody else noticed this, or am I out bicycling?

I guess it’s all about who the producers are trying to appeal to, and in this case I think they managed to appeal to nobody (except those sexual deviants content to stare at Catwoman’s body the whole time — Who would ever do that? I can’t think of anybody. Sheesh.)

Perhaps their first mistake was hiring a director who calls himself Pitof — isn’t that a rice dish?