Catfight

Anyone remember those overly long, brutal Peter Griffin vs. Chicken fight sequences in Family Guy? That’s basically what this movie is. Except Catfight is better because it has queer ladies and also isn’t Family Guy.

Catfight is about Veronica and Ashley, two women who were friends in college but have since drifted. Veronica is now the wife of a politician and mother to a teenage son. Ashley is an artist living with her girlfriend who wants to have a baby. Upon reconnecting at a party, things get heated. What starts as the two women passively aggressively sniping at each other ends with Veronica and Ashley beating the absolute shit out of each other.

Two years pass because this movie acknowledges the realistic time frame it would take to recover from the amount of damage these characters did to each other. Veronica has spent most of the two years in a coma and awakes to find her husband and son dead and her money to have run out on hospital bills. Meanwhile, Ashley’s life has flourished. The two women again meet, things get heated and again, they beat the shit out of each other.

The third act is much the same. Another two years have passed. Ashley was the one in a coma this time and in the meantime, her life has fallen apart. Ashley and Veronica again meet and after a failed attempt at reconciliation, begin to fight again.

Catfight is majorly hit or miss. It’s a dark comedy that requires you to laugh at the genuinely brutal fight scenes between these two women among other bleak subject matter. But when it works, it’s a great mixture of shocking and funny. The best bit is probably the first fight scene because it escalates so quickly and goes to a place or really surprising brutality. It’s genuinely John Wick levels of brutal.

It’s a fine line this movie walks between realism and absurdist comedy. The over-the-top fight scenes are followed by expensive, long-term medical recovery which renders both women broke. These moments of dark political commentary about subjects like the state of the medical system are where the movie falls down. The joke is basically asking the audience to laugh at the general absurdity of inequality. Without some sort of over-the-top aspect, I don’t find it funny. It’s just sad because it’s true.

This is not a WLW movie that’s main focus is queer lady activities. However, it is also not a movie that has a lesbian lead whose sexuality is minimal and incidental to the plot. The plot is focused elsewhere but Veronica is an explicitly lesbian character and this does come into play. Beyond this, I give this movie credit for not de-sexing its lesbians. There is discussion between Veronica and her girlfriend Lisa about their sexual relationship which was a pleasant surprise. Often when lesbian characters are portrayed in films made for straight people, the idea of them actually having sex is aggressively not mentioned. Not Catfight though! Catfight will absolutely make mention of how this lesbian couple enjoys using a strap-on in bed.

Catfight is a deeply uneven movie and it will not appeal to everyone. Not all of the jokes landed for me but the thing is, Catfight is unique and when it did work, it made me genuinely laugh out loud. This is really a matter of personal preference but for me, I’d rather watch an uneven moment of Catfight that has big comedic highs as well as jokes that fall flat as opposed to a more standard movie where none of the jokes necessarily bomb but none of them get more than a weak chuckle out of me.

If nothing else, Catfight felt fresh as a comedy. I can’t imagine anyone will see this and feel like they’ve seen it before in other movies. It’s an uneven movie but a fresh and memorable one with great performances from its leads and a great lesbian character in a narrative that integrates her sexuality without making it the focal point of her character or story.

Overall rating: 5.8/10

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