Birds of PreyBack in my comic book days, I read some of "Birds of Prey"--relaunched in 2010 and penned by the amazingly talented Gail Simone with gorgeous artwork by Ed Benes. This was one of many wonderful serials put out by DC Comics in and around this time, both plumbing the depths of that delightful comic book locale, Gotham City, and the diverse and engaging people who call it home. The stories were rich and full of fantastic turns that kept the audience interested in reading the next issue, and the action was thrilling. There was so much that was great about those comics. It's a tragedy that Birds of Prey has none of that charm or magic.
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For those of you who have been reading my essays on movies, you probably know that it's rare that I deviate from a (largely) expository format, or even insert criticism into the writing. This is because--for the most part--I believe that most movies can be appreciated as something "good" or "bad" on subjective criteria, so what's the point of tearing a movie down? I've deliberately avoided writing about movies that I either detest--like the hideous Free Enterprise, which is a shallow Kevin Smith wannabe--or others I'm sure I would hate on principle--including exploitative documentaries by Michael Moore, like Bowling for Columbine. I've watched and written about some movies that I would even consider dangerous without some forewarning, like the cultish The Secret (2006). Yet because of my fondness for the source material, I had some hope of enjoying Birds of Prey--which adds the obnoxiously bloated subtitle of "and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn", because screenwriter Christina Hodson simply couldn't be bothered to kill any of her darlings. But to put it bluntly, this movie is nothing short of garbage. There, I said it. This movie took me back to a time before Iron Man resurrected my belief that comic book adaptations could be something special, combining punchy writing, larger themes told in a nuanced way, and meaningful conflict. Back to when I bleakly remembered seeing the abysmal 2003 adaptation of Daredevil, and declaring that I wouldn't bother seeing another comic book movie again, because they had become nothing but a home for weak cash-ins devoid of plot or coherence. It seems that everything comes in waves, and Birds of Prey revisits that low point in comic book movie history, where the action and language is gratuitous and pointless, the characters uninspired and missing any redeemable qualities, all messily tied around story that it would be kind to be called convoluted yet boring.
Oh, Birds of Prey, what are your cinematic sins--there are so many to count? Let's start with the beginning, which unloads a brick of exposition on its unsuspecting audience. Birds of Prey makes a rudimentary storytelling mistake by failing to show not tell what makes a character, instead forcing its audience to suffer through constant narration that meaninglessly meanders. Seriously, the narration never ends in this movie, not that it adds any real depth of understanding to the inner workings of "one Harley Quinn", played by Margot Robbie, who produced a movie about the Birds of Prey, only to throw herself into the limelight. And despite all of the exposition, this movie constantly revisits prior events as though it already anticipates that its audience can't be bothered to pay attention, probably because they are too distracted by anything else, searching for something more enjoyable to do than watching this trainwreck of a movie. Birds of Prey presumes that you've seen its predecessor, Suicide Squad, which also featured Harley as a central character--because a scantily-clad, trashy, cheerleader/clown gets butts in seats. Another thing that annoys me: Harley Quinn is a delightful character that emerged from the masterful "Batman: The Animated Series", who has grown into her own throughout the assorted ancillary Batman comics. Nowadays, she's treated as little more than a sex object antihero who doesn't take any sass and dresses in fishnets and carries a big mallet--a commercialized "riot grrrl". Birds of Prey adds irrelevant details--like about her neglectful father and time in an abusive Catholic orphanage--in a quaint animated opening sequence that has nothing to do with the story. From here, it awkwardly segues into a montage about her "puddin'" (i.e. The Joker) breaking up with her, which is a point that is constantly beaten to death to try to justify her "inner turmoil" about rediscovering herself in the aftermath. See, apparently this Harley is having her own "identity crisis", and goes through the motions of coping with a break up, but it all feels like a tired cliche. She cuts her hair and eats ice cream in her jammies. But she also throws daggers with unerring accuracy at a likeness of The Joker...oooh, edgy. That brings up another point: for a movie called Birds of Prey, it spends the majority of its time inflicting this interpretation of Harley Quinn on its audience, and only brings together this assorted mix of milquetoast versions of the great female heroines pretty much at the end, as if to rub salt in the wound for anyone hoping for anything resembling the source material.
The themes of Birds of Prey are so embarrassingly hamfisted, that it might have just been called "Guys Suck and Girls Rule", or the like. The villain of the movie is crime boss Roman Sionis a.k.a. "Black Mask" (Ewan McGregor), who isn't just a gangster, but a sadistic, psychopathic misogynist, who apparently likes to cut the faces off of his victims, though he is only seen to do this once, and it is actually performed by his lackey, Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina). But that isn't enough to make these men villains, oh no! No, Roman has to be made into a whiny, entitled man child, who is a full-blown narcissist, lashing out at women, ordering them to strip in public, and disparaging them with pejoratives. There's a lot of "man hate" in Birds of Prey, and Roman and Zsasz become villains because of their sex, which gets lumped into meaning privilege. (This loses some of its impact, though, when the ladies of Birds of Prey literally play dress up before the final showdown with Roman's thugs.) Birds of Prey all but beats you over the head with this message minute after minute. Walking cop movie cliche Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) has a laborious backstory about how her now boss stole her promotion, and how she is constantly treated like the only female cop in a police force from the 1950s, which is but one of so many unconvincing details about this flick. Dinah Lance a.k.a. "Black Canary" (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is a singer in Roman's night club, but after Harley breaks the legs of Roman's driver, the crime boss makes her his driver instead, despite losing a talented songstress in the process--because reasons. And of course, her big musical number has her singing "It's A Man's Man's Man's World", because (in case you hadn't been paying attention) men suck, obviously, duh! And not just men, but white men! Consider when the completely unlikable child thief, Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), bites back at Dinah about her unrepentant stealing being okay because its only from "rich white guys", or how almost every single villain in the movie is not just a man, but a white man. When you notice this obvious attempt to stoke outrage in women and people of color, it is clear that Birds of Prey is all too willing to provoke its audience and caricatured interpretations of social injustice...just to sell a ticket. A personal favorite character of mine from the comics, Helena Bertinelli a.k.a. "Huntress" (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), is relegated to a pointless afterthought, despite being the basis for Renee's investigation prior to Harley blowing up Ace Chemicals. (Something Harley did for "closure", or something, like it even matters.) A flashback of some mob assassination of her family and of her training as an assassin in Sicily is all we get about Huntress, and my only thought in this briefest of moments was "why can't I be watching that movie instead"? Following Joker, Birds of Prey is another "R-rated" entry into the "DC Extended Universe", but this movie exploits that opportunity just to ape Deadpool, dropping F-bombs and other profanities without reserve and to engage in truly crass humor. Take when Cassandra swallows a rare diamond that "contains the coordinates for the Bertinelli family fortune" (because a rare diamond wasn't enough of a MacGuffin), and all Birds of Prey does is take this as an invitation to make a bunch of laxative jokes.
Like Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey is overindulgent in cramming music into its scenes without any delicacy--like it was trying to sell you a soundtrack with the price of admission. Each action scene degenerates into the same song and dance, with nonsensical locales and faux martial arts with choreography that looks like it was done for a high school interpretation of John Wick. In an absurd showdown in a funhouse (one that looks more like a strip club, mind you), there's a moment where one baddie actually waits for Harley to get out of the way before missing her deliberately. (Face palm.) Or take the excessive location transitions during the film's final minutes--please, let it end--where the weather alternates between soupy fog to a clear night for a car chase, and then back to fog at the pier. (What is going on with the weather in Gotham City?!) Birds of Prey gives new definition to the word "implausible", and that's even taking into consideration that it is adapted from a comic book series. Because Harley is being portrayed as an antiheroine, she doesn't kill cops when she storms the GCPD to collect Cassandra for Roman, instead firing glitter-infused beanies from a high-powered grenade launcher at them. But when it comes to the bounty hunters Roman also hires to apprehend Cassandra, she has no qualms about slaughtering them...or even ramming a shopping cart into a hapless grocery store clerk when she full-on steals from the store, because as she tells the thief Cassandra, "paying is for chumps". Harley is a wildly inconsistent character throughout Birds of Prey, and that's not a good thing here, despite her character being supposedly crazy. Perhaps that's one of the most insulting aspects of this movie: using mental illness to circumvent consistent character development. And for a movie with a budget of around $100 million, you would think that they would have better special effects. Instead we get a cheaply rendered face that Zsasz cuts off or an obvious dummy substituted in when Roman is blown to bits by a grenade at the end of the movie. (I'd say "spoilers" here, but who cares? I didn't by this point.) The list of cinematic sins of Birds of Prey could go on; but just as the movie thankfully came to an end, so too will this essay, and all I can say in closing is that the comic and its audience deserved better.
Recommended for: Well, if you had to ask by this point, I'd say "no one". Birds of Prey represents a new low for comic book movies, where these properties are being milked by producers to make a quick buck by peddling cheap schlock onto audiences without regard for quality. Seriously, watch something else, unless you plan on "MST3K'ing" it.
Oh, Birds of Prey, what are your cinematic sins--there are so many to count? Let's start with the beginning, which unloads a brick of exposition on its unsuspecting audience. Birds of Prey makes a rudimentary storytelling mistake by failing to show not tell what makes a character, instead forcing its audience to suffer through constant narration that meaninglessly meanders. Seriously, the narration never ends in this movie, not that it adds any real depth of understanding to the inner workings of "one Harley Quinn", played by Margot Robbie, who produced a movie about the Birds of Prey, only to throw herself into the limelight. And despite all of the exposition, this movie constantly revisits prior events as though it already anticipates that its audience can't be bothered to pay attention, probably because they are too distracted by anything else, searching for something more enjoyable to do than watching this trainwreck of a movie. Birds of Prey presumes that you've seen its predecessor, Suicide Squad, which also featured Harley as a central character--because a scantily-clad, trashy, cheerleader/clown gets butts in seats. Another thing that annoys me: Harley Quinn is a delightful character that emerged from the masterful "Batman: The Animated Series", who has grown into her own throughout the assorted ancillary Batman comics. Nowadays, she's treated as little more than a sex object antihero who doesn't take any sass and dresses in fishnets and carries a big mallet--a commercialized "riot grrrl". Birds of Prey adds irrelevant details--like about her neglectful father and time in an abusive Catholic orphanage--in a quaint animated opening sequence that has nothing to do with the story. From here, it awkwardly segues into a montage about her "puddin'" (i.e. The Joker) breaking up with her, which is a point that is constantly beaten to death to try to justify her "inner turmoil" about rediscovering herself in the aftermath. See, apparently this Harley is having her own "identity crisis", and goes through the motions of coping with a break up, but it all feels like a tired cliche. She cuts her hair and eats ice cream in her jammies. But she also throws daggers with unerring accuracy at a likeness of The Joker...oooh, edgy. That brings up another point: for a movie called Birds of Prey, it spends the majority of its time inflicting this interpretation of Harley Quinn on its audience, and only brings together this assorted mix of milquetoast versions of the great female heroines pretty much at the end, as if to rub salt in the wound for anyone hoping for anything resembling the source material.
The themes of Birds of Prey are so embarrassingly hamfisted, that it might have just been called "Guys Suck and Girls Rule", or the like. The villain of the movie is crime boss Roman Sionis a.k.a. "Black Mask" (Ewan McGregor), who isn't just a gangster, but a sadistic, psychopathic misogynist, who apparently likes to cut the faces off of his victims, though he is only seen to do this once, and it is actually performed by his lackey, Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina). But that isn't enough to make these men villains, oh no! No, Roman has to be made into a whiny, entitled man child, who is a full-blown narcissist, lashing out at women, ordering them to strip in public, and disparaging them with pejoratives. There's a lot of "man hate" in Birds of Prey, and Roman and Zsasz become villains because of their sex, which gets lumped into meaning privilege. (This loses some of its impact, though, when the ladies of Birds of Prey literally play dress up before the final showdown with Roman's thugs.) Birds of Prey all but beats you over the head with this message minute after minute. Walking cop movie cliche Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) has a laborious backstory about how her now boss stole her promotion, and how she is constantly treated like the only female cop in a police force from the 1950s, which is but one of so many unconvincing details about this flick. Dinah Lance a.k.a. "Black Canary" (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is a singer in Roman's night club, but after Harley breaks the legs of Roman's driver, the crime boss makes her his driver instead, despite losing a talented songstress in the process--because reasons. And of course, her big musical number has her singing "It's A Man's Man's Man's World", because (in case you hadn't been paying attention) men suck, obviously, duh! And not just men, but white men! Consider when the completely unlikable child thief, Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), bites back at Dinah about her unrepentant stealing being okay because its only from "rich white guys", or how almost every single villain in the movie is not just a man, but a white man. When you notice this obvious attempt to stoke outrage in women and people of color, it is clear that Birds of Prey is all too willing to provoke its audience and caricatured interpretations of social injustice...just to sell a ticket. A personal favorite character of mine from the comics, Helena Bertinelli a.k.a. "Huntress" (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), is relegated to a pointless afterthought, despite being the basis for Renee's investigation prior to Harley blowing up Ace Chemicals. (Something Harley did for "closure", or something, like it even matters.) A flashback of some mob assassination of her family and of her training as an assassin in Sicily is all we get about Huntress, and my only thought in this briefest of moments was "why can't I be watching that movie instead"? Following Joker, Birds of Prey is another "R-rated" entry into the "DC Extended Universe", but this movie exploits that opportunity just to ape Deadpool, dropping F-bombs and other profanities without reserve and to engage in truly crass humor. Take when Cassandra swallows a rare diamond that "contains the coordinates for the Bertinelli family fortune" (because a rare diamond wasn't enough of a MacGuffin), and all Birds of Prey does is take this as an invitation to make a bunch of laxative jokes.
Like Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey is overindulgent in cramming music into its scenes without any delicacy--like it was trying to sell you a soundtrack with the price of admission. Each action scene degenerates into the same song and dance, with nonsensical locales and faux martial arts with choreography that looks like it was done for a high school interpretation of John Wick. In an absurd showdown in a funhouse (one that looks more like a strip club, mind you), there's a moment where one baddie actually waits for Harley to get out of the way before missing her deliberately. (Face palm.) Or take the excessive location transitions during the film's final minutes--please, let it end--where the weather alternates between soupy fog to a clear night for a car chase, and then back to fog at the pier. (What is going on with the weather in Gotham City?!) Birds of Prey gives new definition to the word "implausible", and that's even taking into consideration that it is adapted from a comic book series. Because Harley is being portrayed as an antiheroine, she doesn't kill cops when she storms the GCPD to collect Cassandra for Roman, instead firing glitter-infused beanies from a high-powered grenade launcher at them. But when it comes to the bounty hunters Roman also hires to apprehend Cassandra, she has no qualms about slaughtering them...or even ramming a shopping cart into a hapless grocery store clerk when she full-on steals from the store, because as she tells the thief Cassandra, "paying is for chumps". Harley is a wildly inconsistent character throughout Birds of Prey, and that's not a good thing here, despite her character being supposedly crazy. Perhaps that's one of the most insulting aspects of this movie: using mental illness to circumvent consistent character development. And for a movie with a budget of around $100 million, you would think that they would have better special effects. Instead we get a cheaply rendered face that Zsasz cuts off or an obvious dummy substituted in when Roman is blown to bits by a grenade at the end of the movie. (I'd say "spoilers" here, but who cares? I didn't by this point.) The list of cinematic sins of Birds of Prey could go on; but just as the movie thankfully came to an end, so too will this essay, and all I can say in closing is that the comic and its audience deserved better.
Recommended for: Well, if you had to ask by this point, I'd say "no one". Birds of Prey represents a new low for comic book movies, where these properties are being milked by producers to make a quick buck by peddling cheap schlock onto audiences without regard for quality. Seriously, watch something else, unless you plan on "MST3K'ing" it.