A stupendous misfire that tries and fails to be an adrenaline rush but is nothing more than hollow dome masquerading as a movie
When Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) was desperately trying to get some alone time with her breakfast egg sandwich, I got her. I was there. I knew the frustration and joy mixed together to have something to love so much, so close and yet unable to be satisfied by it because the entirety of Gotham City’s underworld is after you is just the worst. We’ve all been there right? Harley Quinn and her egg sandwich was the highlight point for me. The rest of Birds of Prey (and the fantabulous emanc — blah blah blah…it doesn’t even matter) is a supremely and depressingly ghastly movie. A wonderfully riotous concept with so much potential reduced to caustic cliches amid gore that tries and fails to substitute in anything that resembles an interesting story or characters worth giving a damn about.
It’s aggressively bitter and even worse — with all that colour, energy and potential swirling around the vacuum — lazy. I kept thinking about how much more interesting it could have been in the hands of someone like Edgar Wright or Ana Lily Amanpour. (give her money to make a weird fucked up comic book film you cowards!) It’s a film without an identity. Aping Wright, Scorcese, the Ocean films, definitely Deadpool and Tim Burton’s Batman’s films. With none of it morphing into anything distinctive. The plot is slapped together in a bafflingly back and forth manner — Quinn has a target on her back with crime boss Roman Sionis/Black Mask (Ewan McGregor, on another planet with his turn) intent on taking her down unless she can get to a teenage pickpocket before the rest of Gotham comes crashing down on her. It adds nothing to Robbie’s Quinn or to other embarrassingly thinly scripted team members — Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and GCPD cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez). All of them walking cliches that the script painfully points out are cliches but does nothing with them beyond thinking that that’s what passes for witty comedy.
It’s even more frustrating because all the elements are there to bring people some kind of giddy joy for a couple of hours. Something with reckless abandon and a big ‘fuck you’ smile in the face of pearl clutching sentiments. All the things that sink the film are the things that really could have brought it to life beyond an excuse throw up some silly graphics and saccharine pop songs. While Robbie often comes across as always reaching to find the essence of a character she plays, the conviction and enthusiasm she’s found in bringing Harley Quinn to the screen is wonderful (and easily the best part of the movie). The supporting cast is equally strong. On paper. Warner Bros. have stumbled into a successful formula for the DCEU. It carries positive messaging in front and behind the camera. It has Mary Elizabeth fucking Winstead, a hyena and no Jared Leto! It’s should be goddamn layup !
And yet it ends up being a complete mess in all aspects while also somehow being painfully manufactured to hit all the notes the studio thinks it needs to hit. Right down to the continually awful and predictable song cues.
While it’s fantastically positive to have a movie like this get made, and Margot Robbie in the seat as producer as well as the lead — the potential for her to develop more homegrown, bigger budget projects in Australia is a tantalising proposition — Birds of Prey is a baaaaad miss. And not in a way where I was licking my lips in anticipation and hoping that it would flail and falter like some of the most idiotic recesses of the internet wanted for it. I am honestly so perplexed by how tone deaf it is, or at the very least, how I’ve received it. It’s barely competently made, lacks any sort of chemistry between any of the characters that a taxidermied animal seems to bring more emotional resonance than any of the living performers, flat action scenes and a woefully DOA script.
No amount of glitter, colour, themes of sisterhood, it’s stab at comedy or revelry in violence can save the film from being nothing more than a shadow of what it could’ve been. All that said, the very idea of being able to have a film like Birds of Prey that may not work at all on any level and yet won’t permanently cripple the careers of any of it’s stars or director — Cathy Yan is developing her next film with A24 so of course I’m excited — speaks to the progress that has been achieved. It’s okay for a blockbuster comic book film with female leads, a female director, aimed squarely at women to fail, to be imperfect (though I’m pretty sure it’ll make a tidy profit at the box office and even I can’t believe I’m in the minority of actually thinking it’s a terrible film, this really isn’t at all like me and I don’t get why it hit all the wrong notes for me) — and not have studios have their balls shrivel up and stop making films with these ingredients at the forefront.
That’s almost enough to commend the film by itself. Or how about looking at it another way? The increase in female driven action and superhero films have become the equivalent of the excessive, fun action films of the 80’s and early 90’s. Some are going to be great, some are going to be impossibly stupid and bad, and some are going to be determinedly middle of the road. Ultimately the expanding and actionable opportunity for different stories to be made by different people even if they don’t quite work is a good thing. But it doesn’t excuse Birds of Prey from being a woeful misfire.
Swish Collective 