Catwoman: Hunted

• Directed by Shinsuke Terasawa
• February 8, 2022
• Catwoman by Bill Finger and Bob Kane

Voice Cast

• Selina Kyle / Catwoman-Elizabeth Gilles
• Batwoman-Stephanie Beatriz
• Barbara Minerva / Cheetah-Kirby Howell-Baptiste
• Black Mask-Jonathan Banks
• Solomon Grundy, Abaddon-Steve Blum
• Julia Pennyworth-Lauren Cohan
• King Faraday, Boss Moxie-Jonathan Frakes
• Tobias Whale, Morax-Keith David
• Talia al Ghul, Nosferata-Zehra Fazal
• Noguri / Mister Yakuza-Andrew Kishino
• Doctor Tzin-Tzin-Ron Yuan
• La Dama-Jacqueline Obradors
• Cheshire-Kelly Hu
• Domino 1-Eric Lopez

After stealing a valuable jewel, Catwoman finds herself in the crosshairs of a group of powerful criminals, Interpol, and Batwoman.

I went into Catwoman: Hunted with my usual high expectations of a DCAU animated project. More often than not they are enjoyable stories done with quality animation. They are films you put in again and again. Some of them I have watched multiple times sometimes even in the course of a week which is unusual for me.

I can’t say the same will occur with Catwoman: Hunted. It is just ‘meh’. The film is not great or okay but it’s not terrible. It’s precisely what you would expect from direct to video and that is the issue. It’s the type of thing done purely for marketing purposes and not as a creative project to entertain. These are all money making ventures but are not done in a way that talks down to the audience.

The voice work done here is only okay. Most of the actors voicing the characters involved are professional actors and not simply voice performers. That is normal for DC animated projects, but the actors here just do not seem to be putting much effort into their performance. It’s as if they recorded a table read rather than recorded a performance.

What’s more it is as if they are trying to do bad voices when it came to the characters. Was this some weird choice by the director to make Catwoman: Hunted more kid friendly? Catwoman and Batwoman, who are the two main characters, have the two worst voices of all. I know absolutely nothing about Elizabeth Gilles who is the actress playing Catwoman but I am familiar a little bit with Stephanie Beatriz who is the actress playing Batwoman. What they did here just did not work for the film.

Elizabeth Gilles as Catwoman was just bad. I cannot put it any clearer than that. I don’t know if she was faking a voice in an attempt to sound sexy or that’s how she actually sounds. Either way it fell flat.

The story for Catwoman: Hunted is another flaw. The execution is rather juvenile. It is vapid and empty and at times leans into camp. They toss in a couple of cat themed DC villains and a few random Batman connections to help prop things up. They take what is a serious reason as to why Catwoman stole the emerald and use it in a way that feels almost tagged on at the end rather than integrate it into the story. Trafficking of woman is not something to be treated lightly but until the closing moments that motivation is not mentioned. Considering what came before it is out of the blue in connection to the film but not the character.

I know these are not multimillion dollar pictures, but the animation for this one looks cheap. When the images were static it looked great but when they started talking it had that rapid Japanese anime mouth moving thing that really didn’t fit with the words that were being heard. The animation was handled by OLM which is the Japanese studio behind the Pokémon anime series so I guess that explains it.

There’s no danger in the action scenes. No tension whatsoever. They’re not even that good to look at. Like much of this film they are just meh. There is just goofy dialogue which really blunts any excitement they are trying to generate. It is not witty combat banter.

Catwoman: Hunted could have been a very good solo outing for the titular character. Instead it’s just a milquetoast, forgettable film. For the hardcore DCAU fans this is an a must see. For the general movie viewing individual you can skip this.