Birds Of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn)

Birds Of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn) has had to be renamed Harley Quinn: Birds Of Prey in the States to get more bums on cinema seats. Is this the first shoots of audience fatigue creeping into the superhero market after the finality of Avengers: Endgame? Only time will tell on this front, and this year is still to give us Black Widow, The Eternals, The New Mutants and Wonder Woman 1984, so Marvel and DC will certainly hope this isn’t the case.

We’re in an age where superhero flick is a byword for blockbuster, the scepticism of the genre’s early days wiped by the magnitude of the MCU and DC’s standalone output (The Dark Knights and Jokers of the world.) It’s an age where an Aquaman or an Ant-Man film will be amongst the year’s most profitable and talked-about.

For those of us who mark each upcoming film in the calendar and see every single comic book release we hark for something different, fresh, exciting. At the very least we want the definitive version of a character we love in a film that we can rewatch and that feels intrinsically part of the bigger whole. What gets our goat, and I hope I speak for most in saying this, is lazy, derivative and formulaic spins of the same formula.

The problem we have with Birds Of Prey [copy and paste from every review of every DCEU film thus far] is we, indeed, have a fantabulous cast of characters placed into a film that follows the ‘retrieve-MacGuffin-for/from-even-more-evil-than-the-main-character-villain-whilst-only-imagining-what-could-have-been-done’ plot. Recognise that? It blighted Suicide Squad, it blighted Shazam. Even Marvel aren’t immune because it struck down Venom and the first Deadpool.

The Merc-with-a-mouth’s first outing is the ideal comparison point to this movie. A quipping, often very funny and potty-mouthed voiceover meets bone-crunching and meaty fight sequences all wrapped up in a sleepwalking narrative. Mainstream cinema audiences are in a position where they’ll pay good money to see Harley Quinn on screen, that’s testament to the genre in general and Margot Robbie’s fantastic portrayal of the character in Suicide Squad. The least DC could do is give her a good story.

It’s not even about having too much of a good thing (although arguably seeing Harley or any villain just going about their daily lives does somewhat kill some of the mystique) because Robbie brings such gravitas to the role, she’s clearly having an absolute blast and introducing her to the wider DCEU will only benefit it moving forward.

It’s not really a proper Birds Of Prey film either and it takes far too long to bring the characters together. Whilst I admire DC finally showing some patience it is strange not to jump straight in with Gotham City Sirens or at least offering something tangible to link us to the events of Justice League et al which Suicide Squad frustratingly couldn’t bring itself to do either.

There are positives: the styling is down-pat, lifting what was good about Suicide Squad and making this feel like a Harley Quinn film with brilliant pop up titles and eye-searing colour. It’s also largely funny (props for lampooning Ewan McGregor with the Moulin Rouge/Gentlemen Prefer Blondes dream sequence) and does enough to round off the supporting characters who we’ll hopefully get to see again (more of Huntress and Black Canary please.) SPOILER ALERT bumping off Black Mask and Victor Zsasz, though, feels like a mistake at this juncture but credit where it’s due for actually going through with it.

It’s another safe and predictable offering, though, from a company and cast who can do better. I know Joker was a standalone and a one off but you’d like to think that it would have alerted the studios that cinema-going audiences are smart, interesting people who will buy into a film that doesn’t hand everything to them on a plate, that doesn’t give them the same plot, that doesn’t childishly guide them by the hand.

Birds Of Prey is R-rated, it gives us lesser known characters than other DC output, it is a strong message of empowerment with a diverse and interesting cast and production team, it’s about a deranged, psychotic villain/anti-hero who has already bedazzled audiences in a previous outing. And yet, and yet, and yet it still can’t take us off the bloody and beaten path.

3 stars ***