Birds Of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn Is One More Bad Movie In DC Catalog

Director: Cathy Yan

Starring: Margot Robbie, Ewan McGregor, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosie Perez, Ella Jay Basco, Chris Messina

Genre: Action

Year: 2020

Suicide Squad was an incoherent mess that received mostly negative reviews, but even most critics agreed that Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was a highlight of that movie. Even before the movie was even released, Robbie pitched the idea back in 2015. to Warner Bros. of an R-rated girl gang movie centered around the character of Harley Quinn. As Suicide Squad was a huge commercial success, Birds Of Prey was greenlit and Christina Hodson (Bumblebee) was hired to write the script. Cathy Yan (Dead Pigs) was hired as a director in 2018.

If you’re a fan of Harley Quinn and liked Margot Robbie’s performance in Suicide Squad, you’ll probably like Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. If not, then better stay away as it is one more bad movie in the DC catalog.

Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn is set after the events in Suicide Squad, but besides Harley Quinn, it doesn’t feature any other characters from that movie. So if you were wondering, no, Jared Leto’s Joker doesn’t appear in Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.

After splitting with the Joker, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) finds herself in an unenviable situation as many people want her dead. One of them is a narcissistic crime lord Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) aka Black Mask, who enjoys watching his henchman Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina) peel off his enemy’s faces. Harley will soon realize she’s not the only woman Roman wants dead so she’ll join forces with singer turned driver/bodyguard Black Canary, former cop Renee Montoya, assassin Huntress, and thief Cassandra Cain.

Is Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn Any Good?

Although Birds Of Prey is different than most superhero movies it’s evident that filmmakers were influenced by Deadpool, the same way Suicide Squad wanted to be DC’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Birds Of Prey desperately wants to be different, weird, and wacky but it fails. It is a colorful cartoon without much to say, with a weak script peppered with ultra-violence against men, who are, by the way, all villains and scumbags here. The characters are simply not well-written and the whole movie feels like a collection of set pieces glued together by a thin plot. Characters skills come and go as the next scene requires and much of the things that happen in this movie aren’t convincing, even if we take into the account we are watching a movie based on a comic book.

Birds Of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn Official Trailer #1

One of the biggest problems I have with this movie is actually Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. I just didn’t like her at all as she looks and feels like a character taken from some teen magazine. “10 Ways To Look Crazy, Dangerous And Cool”.  Look, I know this is a character from comic books but still. She’s insane. Yes, if you ask a 12-year old girl how a crazy person should look and behave.

Quinn is a psychiatrist who fell in love with Joker, went insane, and became his lover. Where did she get her fighting skills? How is she so strong that she can take a man twice her size? That’s one more problem with this character. Her skills come and go – in one moment she looks helpless while in the other she’s bashing heads. In one scene she beats up 10 guys twice her size while in the other she has a problem taking down an almost 60-year old woman. She’s simply not a well-written character and  Robbie’s performance doesn’t help either. I’m sorry but I found her almost unwatchable – from her acting to annoying voice, I swear to God I wanted to turn off or mute this movie after only 5 minutes. Lame jokes didn’t help either. And if you dislike the main character so much it’s hard to like a movie where she is front and center for most of the time. At least other characters in a movie were much more bearable.

But there’s more. From uneven tone and performances to non-linear structure in the first half of the movie that adds to nothing, lame jokes, and some eye-rolling girl power moments it’s hard to find some good things here. Action sequences are actually not bad. They are clearly executed but look like a music video that becomes tiresome after some time as it feels like director Cathy Yan learned two or three tricks that she’s copy-pasting through the whole movie.

Ewan McGregor gives an uneven performance as narcissistic lunatic Roman Sionis but I think that’s more of a problem with the script. At one moment he’s actually very good and fun to watch and in another, he’s just bad. Still, his villain is one of the better in DC universe although that doesn’t say much if we remember how awful were most of DCEU villains in the last couple of years – Doomsday, Steppenwolf, Enchantress, Ares, Black Manta, Jared Leto’s Joker or Lex Luthor.

Birds Of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn Official Trailer #2

If you’re a fan of previous DC movies and a fan of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn you may like Birds Of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. But in my opinion, this is one more bad movie for DC but at least it’s more coherent than Suicide Squad and little better than Justice League, BvS, or Aquaman. The movie was also a huge commercial disappointment so I doubt we’ll ever see a sequel. Thank God.

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