If someone wants to cram Halle Berry's tender vittles into black leather and call it ‘‘empowerment,’’ who are we to argue? Radical feminism should always look so hot.

Unfortunately, Berry's dominatrix routine gets coughed up in the same hairball of stilted dialogue and idiot- grade plotting that constitutes the rest of ‘‘Catwoman,’’ and the effect is, well, less than mouth-watering. It is, in fact, purrrrr-ile, to paraphrase the inimitable and quite possibly insane Eartha Kitt.

In both style and substance, this ‘‘Catwoman’’ is a step down from Tim Burton's exploration of the character in ‘‘Batman Returns’’ (1992). For starters, it features perhaps the most preposterous pair of villains ever to grace the genre: cosmetics mogul George Hedare (Lambert Wilson, the decadent Frenchy from the ‘‘Matrix’’ sequels) and his aging supermodel wife, Laurel, played by ‘‘Basic Instinct’’ ice-picker Sharon Stone. Hoping to corner the market in beauty products, the Hedares have created a line of — hold on to your seats — addictive skin creams that turn your face into an ugly pizza of welts and scar-tissue if you dare stop using them.

The inevitable public outrage and subsequent FDA penalties don't seem to bother the Hedares — they're ‘‘live in the moment’’ evil-doers, evidently.

When mousy graphic artist Patience Philips (Berry) stops by the lab to drop off some designs and accidentally overhears details of the plot, a pair of Hedare Beauty thugs flush her into the Hudson River to her apparent death. Fortunately for Patience, her demise is only temporary, thanks to an enchanted Egyptian mau that purrs life back into her wet, gunk-covered corpse. Patience awakens with keen, cat-like senses and superhuman strength and agility, not to mention a strong taste for catnip and vengeance.

Armed with a spunky new attitude, Patience completes her transformation with — ta-da! — the makeover. Chopping off her curly locks and discarding her wardrobe of baggy, desexualizing clothes, she essentially trades in Edie Brickell for L’il Kim. At night, she dons stiletto heels, a domineering leather two-piece and diamond-tipped claws to hit the streets as a vigilante — defying the Hedares and symbolically protecting the world from unrealistic standards of beauty. Halle Berry diminishing our standards of beauty? Nice try.

Stone is stiffly bemused as the jilted wife whose many indignities drive her to crime (‘‘I'm a woman — I'm used to doing things I don't like!’’), though she does muster some of that old ‘‘Total Recall’’ spunk in a fight scene with Berry. French director Pitof (‘‘Vidocq’’) is prone to over-direction and pretentious visual flourishes, but using just a single name like that, are we the least bit surprised?

Former ‘‘Law & Order’’ hunk Benjamin Bratt plays Patience's would- be boyfriend, a robbery detective who ultimately suffers the same brush-off usually reserved for second-billed female actors in action movies of this ilk. Bratt is smooth in the role, but emerges as little more than an emasculated sidekick: Catwoman, meet your Pussy-Boy.