Movie Breakdown: Birds Of Prey
Pre-Screening Ramble:
Suicide Squad was so bad that I haven’t even bothered to do a “go back and see if it’s as bad as I thought it was” screening, but I can at least applaud it for bringing about Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. Here’s hoping Hollywood didn’t ruin a good thing.
Post-Screening Ramble:
I had a good time with Birds Of Prey, but it’s a wildly manic movie with a story that’s likely pretty different than what you’re expecting. First things first, you should know that this is not in any way the team-up flick you’ve been sold in the trailers. Yes, the ladies do have a segment where they all work together, but that happens near the end of the film. This is, for all intents and purposes, a movie about Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) – she narrates it and she is its undeniable star. If that’s disappointing to you, I get it, especially if you were hoping that Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) and others from the comics would get a lot of screen time. Here’s the deal though, this movie only works because of the heavy use of Harley. She’s an unreliable narrator, and the end result of that is a truly bonkers retelling of a very simple story. No detail is remembered in order or without some kind of embellishment, so the movie constantly feels like it’s being projected straight out of a crazy person’s brain. Not only does this spruce up the bare bones plot, but it allows the other elements in the film to soar. The action pieces are all big and very well done, and the performances are nutty – McGregor is wildly over the top, Winstead is too weird to not find charming, Perez is hilariously rigid, and so on and so forth. I don’t know how director Cathy Yan slapped together such a silly, uneven mix of things and made it all pop, but she did and it’s got me looking forward to whatever she’s doing next.
Birds Of Prey is not what I thought it was going to be, but that’s definitely not a bad thing. It’s not perfect – the stuff with the kid doesn’t always work and it does take some time to settle into Harley’s mind – but it’s a fun, entertaining movie that should have come out alongside all the other blockbusters this summer.
One Last Thought:
I’m excited for everyone to see Birds Of Prey just so that I can talk about how it ends. Obviously, I’m not going to spoil it here, but I will at least note that I found it to be super weird.
