Grade: D-

Verdict: Kitty Litter.

By BOB LONGINO
Cox News Service

The nagging question in the choking hairball of a movie known as "Catwoman" involves our heroine slinking on hindquarters across a rooftop.

It's the film's centerpiece nighttime catwalk. The camera first focuses on Halle Berry's stiletto heels and then slowly rises to take a lengthy and lovingly direct aim at her skintight leather-clad behind.

The question is: Is it really Berry's backside or just another of the movie's overabundance of computer-generated images?

Ah, the challenge of modern-day moviegoing.

There's way too much CG -- most of it far too unconvincing -- in "Catwoman." Way too much driveling cinematic flash. Not nearly enough intrigue. And absolutely no common sense.

In her role as an icy, rhymes-with-witch villain, Sharon Stone has nipped, tucked and starved herself to the point she's ready to go out in real life and stalk Ashton Kutcher.

And Berry? She actually has to "purrr" and "meoww" and lick Benjamin Bratt's face.

"Catwoman" may not be the worst movie of the summer, but it certainly is begging to be drop-kicked to the curb. It's not even campy enough for a good laugh.

How many screenwriters does it take to screw up a $100 million movie? Count 'em: one, two, three, four. And that's just the number of different names that earned screen credit.

What these people have come up with is a movie about killer cosmetics that threaten not just womankind but life as we know it. (Hmm, anybody remember the subplot in the original "Batman"?) In other words, it's makeup that takes out the "bo" and leaves in the "tox."

Women remain beautiful as long as they keep piling on the facial cream. What if they stop? Two words, baby: Keith and Richards.

Innocently caught up in this swirl is Berry, who plays shy and demure advertising artist Patience Philips. She's a wee corporate mouse in the giant makeup house.

Blah blah blah happens, and when Patience finds out about the killer cosmetics, some bad guys dump her in the ocean via a big makeup waste pipeline.

Then (and have trust, people, because none of this has been made up) a little Egyptian cat comes up and gives our dead Patience a lingering French kiss (ewww!) and she is revived to become ... Catwoman, a superheroine who leaps, claws and scratches her way to the truth.

Plenty of mind-boggling things happen in this movie. Bratt, for instance, plays a cop who can't seem to figure out from clues staring him in the face that his new girlfriend Patience is the Catwoman he's seeking for questioning.

There's a dumb one-on-one basketball scene with Berry and Bratt and a dumber Ferris wheel mishap with them, too. Frances Conroy ("Six Feet Under") shows up as a mysterious cat-loving lady who keeps dozens of felines in her home. (Thankfully, we're spared a gander at what must be one super-sized litter box.)

The film's director, Pitof (the visual effects supervisor for "Alien: Resurrection"), shoots for style over substance. His camera is constantly on the move, sweeping this way before scooting off that way. There are computer-generated crane shots, tracking shots, aerial zooms and zigzags, all to no particular end.

He even sends his camera down a cat's throat. Yuk.

Clearly, nothing's going to save "Catwoman."