REVIEW: 'Birds of Prey' (and the less-than-fantabulous reception of one critic)

Ella Jay Basco and Margot Robbie hang out in a scene from Birds of Prey, directed by Cathy Yan.

If only this movie tasted as good as it looked.

There’s a really funny sequence in Cathy Yan’s colourful superhero romp where Harley Quinn causes all sorts of mayhem, and in typical post-partying fashion goes for a bite to eat. She’s got her eyes set on this beautiful breakfast sandwich, but before she can sink her teeth into it, she’s interrupted and the sandwich is thrown into the air – the eggs, cheese and bacon smash onto the asphalt in a yellow gooey mess.

That breakfast sandwich was me for most of the movie. I had all the ingredients for a brisk, 109-minute ride of joy – a wonderful pastel palette, funny characters, well-choreographed action – but I was also thrown into each and every one of its numerous directions at dizzying speeds, and by the end of it I felt like it was, for the most part, a hit.

I’m only going to type the full title once, because it’s so damn stupid – Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) – picks up after the events of Suicide Squad, the much-maligned DC Comics anti-hero (villain?) team-up that was a spectacular flop with critics and fans, but incidentally introduced us to Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. The Joker has mercilessly dumped her, to which we say is a good thing because Jared Leto was awful and Robbie doesn’t need a co-star, and during Harley’s post-breakup blues she ends up getting kidnapped by crazed gangster Roman Sionis (a wonderful Ewan McGregor), who has a fetish for peeling the skin of his victims.

Ewan McGregor as the film’s villain, Roman Sionis, a.k.a. Black Mask.

In exchange for her freedom, Harley offers to help Sionis find a rare diamond engraved with the bank account numbers of a rich crime family, but her plan gets complicated when the diamond is taken by teenage pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco). Sionis tasks his nightclub singer-turned-driver Dinah (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) to keep an eye on Harley, but Dinah betrays him and becomes an informant for police detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez). A new vigilante on the scene dubbed “the crossbow killer”, a.k.a. Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) also arrives on the scene and attempts to make everyone’s life miserable.

Mixing in the use of animation, flashbacks and lots of non-linear storytelling, Yan has created a film that is told straight from Harley’s scatterbrained POV, but it’s a double-edged sword; the story works fine, even though it’s not very original (basically “let’s save this poor kid”), but it also ends up lacking rhythm, and some scenes feel rushed (the lead-up to the fight, Huntress’ backstory) while others feel a little slow (Doc, who despite written as being Taiwanese doesn’t speak Mandarin with a Taiwanese accent – just sayin’).

If this is the next step in DC’s cinematic world it’s a positive one, and perhaps with a little more word-of-mouth, may pick up at the box office despite grossing less than $50 million its first week, on a budget of $84.5 million, according to BoxOfficeMojo. The reason for its poor financial reception is still guesswork – poor brand recognition? Suicide Squad wounds still fresh? The R rating? – but I can’t help but think about its disastrously poor title, which is both annoying to say and a marketing problem. The film is flippant and – at times – bat-shit (get it?) crazy, so I guess the title is accurate, but did we really need it?

I liked Harley and Huntress, and I definitely liked Roman Sionis and that breakfast sandwich, but nothing in particular about its story or themes really stood out. We’re given a feature-length tour of what goes inside Harley’s head, and while there’s a lot to like, there are also very few exciting moments to speak of.

Birds of Prey gets three stars out of four.