Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) Review (2/7/2020)

My expectations for Birds of Prey were kind of all over the place. When I first saw the trailers a couple months ago, I was looking forward to it, but as time passed my expectations diminished somewhat, and I found myself rather ambivalent towards it. I went in with pretty neutral expectations, and perhaps I may have felt differently about the movie had I not, but I honestly had a pretty good time with it. I was pleasantly surprised by how fresh and fun it was, and though it had plenty of flaws to pick apart, and wasn't quite up to par with DC's best, it's still a massive breath of fresh air for the character of Harley Quinn after the schlock that was Suicide Squad.

The first thing to say is that while the movie is called Birds of Prey, it's really a Harley Quinn movie at its heart. But it really seems to understand the chaotic, anarchistic nature of Quinn's character far more than Suicide Squad did, and the film is lacking the gross objectification that Suicide Squad did, portraying her as a legitimately fun loving free spirited woman rather than an object of sexual fantasy. Margot Robbie was good in Suicide Squad, but she didn't have a ton to work with, and here that's changed, with Harley Quinn given the spotlight and the audience invited to truly come in and try and understand her as a person.

I've been comparing it to Suicide Squad a lot, and while that's inevitable, it also does this film a disservice, as it's just a better movie than Suicide Squad overall. While it's still often a little bit "too" edgy, an R rating, colorful, vibrant cinematography, excellent fight choreography and a team of writers and editors that actually seem to care about the final product, this movie succeeds where Suicide Squad failed, nailing the look and feel the Suicide Squad tried and failed to land. Seriously, this movie looks gorgeous, its stylish colors and effects pop off the screen and the costume design, particularly in the lead role, is fantastic, compared to the ugly cinematography and cringe-inducing design of Suicide Squad.

The plot is narrated through Harley Quinn, and while this does lead to a lot of "tell, don't show," moments, the whole thing ends up with this weird, disjointed semi-fourth-wall breaking structure that in any other movie would be bad but in this it really works. The scatterbrained, chaotic nature of Quinn's though process comes off clearly in the way she goes off on tangent, jumps about the story and stretches the truth of what we're seeing in noticeable ways. This style of storytelling is, in this case, a double-edged sword, but we'll come back to that later.

The plot itself is fairly basic, being a action crime thriller about several factions trying to gain possession of a macguffin, but it's a fun enough romp, and what really makes the story shine is the female-centric elements. Harley Quinn's story in this movie is a refreshing one after Suicide Squad; the Joker dumped Harley Quinn, and the true manipulative nature of their relationship is laid bare as Harley Quinn now believes she is nothing without him. The entire movie is about women who are being used and trodden over by men and who are tired of it, and are ready to fight back. While this isn't as good of a movie as, say, Wonder Woman, it's probably the most effectively feminist of the recent batch of female-centric comic book movies. Unlike Wonder Woman, the camera never seems to gawk at its female protagonists, even when they're scantily clad or something similar. Unlike Captain Marvel, there is more than one major female player, and so the pressure of having one character represent all women at once. Captain Marvel was constantly switching between being a perfect, all-powerful girl power figure and an actual person with flaws and insecurities, creating a protagonist that just wasn't consistent at all, but in Birds of Prey, one woman's flaws is countered by another's strength. They all have different backgrounds, personalities, character strengths and flaws, appearances, ethnicities, etc. No one character is forced to represent all women, and it allows the characters to be people, and no matter how scummy or awful these people sometimes are, they still deserve to be treated like human beings. It all converges together in a team up that, while not the most satisfying we've seen in recent years, has an extra punch of showing that while a patriarchal society likes to pit women against each other, together we are stronger than that, and we can fight back and support each other in equal measure.

All praise aside, though, while I enjoyed this movie quite a bit, I can't say that I outright loved it. It's better than a lot of DC movies, but it doesn't reach the heights of Wonder Woman or Shazam, with the former's philosophical depth and the latter's heartwarming found family story both going deeper than this one did. While Harley Quinn is fantastic in this, the side characters are significantly less developed, and many of them are not faithful to their comic book counterparts (this didn't bother me too much but it will a lot of people). The whole third act, while satisfying enough, is somewhat rushed and loses a lot of the charm of the first two acts. Ewan Macgregor is fun to watch as the villain, but only because he seems to be having fun himself; the actual character is boring and forgettable. In other words, it falls into a lot of the same pitfalls that action Blockbusters these days often find themselves falling into.

The biggest issue that Birds of Prey has, though, is the aforementioned "show, don't tell" aspects. While sometimes it works - Harley's constant talk of Joker juxtaposed with his absence in the film shows that while Harley has been manipulated into seeing him as her whole world, he's actually not all that important - it more often doesn't. Plot points come in whenever the plot finds them relevant, and while this fits the chaotic nature of Quinn's narration, it also makes things hard to follow. Character's backstories and personalities are told to us, but only seldom actually shown. There are some good moments with them, but overall there are know genuinely great character scenes for anyone other than Harley.

Overall, Birds of Prey doesn't match the same heights of some of DC's previous efforts - namely, Shazam! and Wonder Woman - but it provides a fun tone and fresh perspective that elevates it above disasters like Suicide Squad, or even recent blunders like the inane Aquaman and the insufferable Joker. It's got some great action sequences and awesome character work with Harley Quinn, and a nice feminist message, and though the film doesn't really hold up beyond that with its plot and side characters, that's still enough to help it stick the landing. If the thought of a Matthew Vaughn movie (Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Secret Service) with less objectification of women appeals to you, you should check this one out.