Tough girls: Anne Hathaway edition

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Partner and I have not been to the movies much this summer. Neither of us has been feeling great this summer, and – frankly – the summer movies (since “The Avengers,” anyway) haven’t been that appealing.

 

 

Finally, last weekend, we went to the movies, and saw “The Dark Knight Rises.”

 

 

Oh, kids, it’s got everything: explosions, and Tom Hardy, and Gary Oldman, and Christian Bale, and the destruction of Manhattan (AKA Gotham City), and Liam Neeson.

 

 

You know I am mostly about the boys. You expect me to drool over Christian’s abs, or Tom’s gigantically developed chest and back. (All of which are fine, by the way.)

 

 

But I want to speak to you about Anne Hathaway.

 

 

I always thought of her as a lightweight actress, a comedienne: “Princess Diaries,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Alice in Wonderland.” I think she’s very pretty – I love her big dark eyes – but as a gay man, I realize that my estimations of a woman’s sexiness are maybe not the same as a straight man’s.

 

 

But Anne Hathaway is utterly wonderful in “The Dark Knight Rises.”

 

She is Catwoman. The movie is smart enough not to call her by that name. She’s a clever thief who dresses in a tight-fitting cat costume when it suits her. She is skillful enough to baffle the omniscient Batman.

 

 

That’s the character. But the actress – ah. Anne is funny. She switches from droll to deadly serious in milliseconds. Her voice goes from obsequious to flat to sarcastic in nothing flat. Her face, even behind a mask, is wonderfully expressive. (Spoiler alert! But not much of a spoiler alert.) At one point in the movie, she and Batman are working in concert. He’s trying to show her how to use his Bat-motorcycle.  He begins to speak –

 

 

And she leaps onto the Bat-cycle, revs the motor – vroom vroom! – and looks bored. “Yeah, I think I got it,” she says.

 

 

She is a certified tough girl.

 

 

There have been lots of Catwomen on TV and in the movies: Eartha Kitt, Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry.

 

 

Anne Hathaway is the best of the lot.

 

 

Vroom vroom!

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