Rated: Not Rated | Running Time: 95 Minutes
From: Dark Sky Films
Available on Blu-ray and DVD: April 25, 2017
Get it via : Amazon
You’d like to release some pent-up anger sometimes, wouldn’t you? I mean, we go through our lives, day to day, holding back from completely blasting someone who annoys us because, well, we probably suck at fighting, don’t want to end up in jail, and in the end it isn’t a nice thing to do. But come on, there are times when in your head you want to completely beat the crap out of someone, and probably would, if it weren’t for the “ending up in jail” thing.
Lucky for Ashley and Veronica jail really isn’t a part of their anger release.
The movie is “Catfight,” and hand-to-hand beating the crap out of each other is the norm for our heroines.
Let’s get to the story…
Sandra Oh plays Veronica. She’s a mom. Yay! She’s also a lush and doesn’t understand why her son likes to draw. Boo! “You can be anything you want, just don’t be this,” she explains to him, while stumbling with drunkenness in his room. She’s also in a crappy relationship with her husband, Stanley (Damian Young).
Anne Heche plays Ashley, living with her lesbian lover, Lisa (Alicia Silverstone). Lisa doesn’t understand why Ashley paints, and neither does an art critic as Ashley creates super-disturbing artwork while the critic prefers the blue bunnies drawn by Ashley’s assistant. Ashley is your stereotypical starving artist
As it would be, Veronica and Ashley were in college together, haven’t seen each other in years, but while at a fancy party for her husband, Veronica runs into Ashley who is an appetizer server, while Veronica is getting liquored up on wine.
Ahh, college memories! Yup, our girls relive the crappy times, Veronica questions Ashley “Are you still doing the art thing you do?”, insults her with a “You’re a caterer, Ashley!”, and Ashley bounces back with a “You’re a trophy wife.”
They part, meet up again in the stairwell, and it’s time to brawl. Holy shit do they brawl!
The winner of Round 1: Ashley!
How bad is the fight? Well, Veronica ends up in a coma for two years, waking up to find her world is turned upside down. She is now completely broke, the world has changed as you can now be drafted at age 16 (this is important as her son went to war) because “If you’re old enough to drive, you’re old enough to kill,” and she lost her husband. Ashley, on the other hand, is rolling in dough as her art is selling like hot cakes.
You can also get pregnant using a turkey baster it seems.
While Veronica is losing her mind trying to figure out her life she discovers Ashley is rich, and it’s revenge time. Yup, lets bust out the pipe wrenches and other hand tools and beat the crap out of each other again!
The winner of Round 2: Veronica!
Yup, you guessed it, now Ashley is in a coma for two years, she wakes up, and her world is upside down. Veronica is, well, at least better now.
Of course Ashley discovers where Veronica is, it’s time for the final showdown, and the winner is…
There’s a lot in this movie, from social commentary to political commentary, from fight humor to fart humor, but most of all the movie centers on two women who don’t have a release to deal with the lives they are leading. In the end Ashley and Veronica need each other in order to take out the frustrations of their lives, in wicked, brutal, catfight fashion.
Here’s the thing, when the movie isn’t getting preachy about the world and focuses on the topsy-turvy lives of Veronica and Ashley, it shines. Sure, much of it is unrealistic, like the fact that somehow the cops are never involved, but Sandra Oh and Anne Heche are wonderful in “Catfight,” and it was so great to see Alicia Silverstone again. The problem comes when the movie tries to build in the social ills of society, the wars, the peace, and tries to make it funny.
For the most part I liked the movie. The fights were completely insane, the acting was great, and there were some funny moments, but the movie needed to stick to the two women and I would have liked it more. For the story of the women and the catfights it’s 4 1/2 stars, and for the social-ness of the films it’s 2 stars. Average it all together and you end up with about 3 1/2 stars for “Catfight.”
The Blu-ray does have a lot of extras, and I was looking forward to “Violent Femmes: The Fight Choreography of ‘Catfight.’” The problem was that it started out interesting, but then it just kept dragging on and on and fell into this “love fest” of compliments for everyone involved in the fighting, from the stunt folks to the choreography folks to the director. It went on for 15 minutes which was about ten minutest too long. The deleted scenes extra was also about fifteen minutes long, with the saving grace being the fart machine because, well, who doesn’t find farts funny.
That’s it for this one! L8R!!