DCEU Review Series
Birds of Prey (and the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
2020
Director: Cathy Yan
Margot Robbie was the best possible person to be cast as Harley Quinn and was regularly placed in terrible movies which failed to capture the essence of the character which made her so beloved from Batman: The Animated Series. She did the best with what was given to her. Great actors will always be great actors even when the film is terrible. Watch the live action Super Mario Brothers Movie, the acting is amazing, the rest of the film is terrible. Great acting cannot save a badly written and directed film.
Ewan McGreggor plays Black Mask and they made the smart visual decision to not throw a ton of makeup on him to match the comic and allow his performance to shine. Any Black Mask design would have copied the Red Skull. Ewan McGreggor is another amazing actor in the film who does his part perfectly against a blah script.
Voiceovers are always a terrible decision in filmmaking. Goodfellas was the only one to ever get it right. Birds of Prey could mute her entire voiceover and it would make no difference, that means it’s not needed.
Thirty minutes into the film and it is anyone’s guess what the plot is. Harley Quinn has broken up with the Joker. Someone wants to kidnap a girl or something. It’s unclear. The action in the film is well done and fun to watch. It certainly elevates its entertainment factor from the early slower moving DCEU Snyder films. So a bad plot is actually salvaged by decent visuals.
Harley teams up with some teenage girl who ate a diamond. Everyone is trying to capture the girl or kill Harley who has a bounty on her head. So they are on the run but it’s not a road trip movie, they just keep going to different locations and having wacky dialogue exchanges. Diamonds are the least rare precious stones in the world. Their value is via a heavily controlled consumer market. It’s also super cliché to have a girl centric movie revolve around diamonds. Oceans Eight had the same gimmick, women cannot steal millions of dollars. In Hollywood women have to steal and fight over jewelry. These films don’t have to be deep think tanks but try to avoid being derivative when possible. It negates the “girl power” message when they are battling over highly feminine items.
The film whips out the character Victor Zsasz, a “catch-all” Batman rogue with no discernable fanbase so they can craft him into any personality they want. He’s constantly tossed into movies and TV shows because of how generic he fits into any circumstance. DC Media needs to stop using this character because it’s not a fun comic reference, it’s a cheap expendable character no one cares about and that’s how it plays out in all his appearances.
Finally, at the one hour twenty mark all the Birds of Prey finally meet and team up for the big climax of the film. Can’t hate the action in this film, it is on point. The fights are well choreographed and believable these femme fatales can take a ton of men out. Antics ensue, Black Mask is blown up with a grenade, solid resolution. Everyone gets a happy ending.
The advertising for this film was dreadful. None of it promoted the plot, it relied solely on Margot Robbie playing Harley Quinn which by this point in the DCEU reputation was not going to be enough. The film made back double its budget in the box office but in Hollywood terms is considered a flop because of advertising costs or something. Sounds like money laundering to me…
Birds of Prey was definitely DC’s take on lightening the tone of the darker Snyder films. After all the critical complaints about how Superman was managed, DC started adopting the Marvel approach of movies which are fun. Harley Quinn and bunch of other obscure ladies from the DC Universe doesn’t have the same appeal as Guardians of the Galaxy but DC has to start somewhere. The film wasn’t horrible, it’s borderline enjoyable but there’s nothing in this story which hasn’t been told in a million other films and the voiceover was excruciating.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com