‘Birds of Prey’ makes audience feel cheep

BY Ron and Leigh

Anyone who has seen the hilarious but raunchy “Suicide Squad” (2016) or even “Deadpool” from that same year, should be heartily anticipating this gritty girl-powered tale, featuring the tagline, “The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.” With so much potential, we wanted to like it so badly, but that’s exactly how we liked it, badly.

Margo Robbie returns in the lead role, but this time, the Joker’s sadistic sidekick gets her own story and makes the best of it. Produced by Robbie’s own production company, directed by Cathy Yan in her first full length feature and written by Christina Hodson (“Bumblebee”), this all female production team wanted to show the world how to make a strong female action feature without becoming another dreaded “Charlie’s Angels.”

They seem to have checked all the boxes; a charismatic cast with sufficient street-cred, marvelously choreographed fight scenes, offbeat soundtrack, wicked humor and is cartoonishly violent. Yet, it leaves the audience on the sidelines and never seems to engage us in the story, such as it is. We kept hoping but it left us cold throughout.

The story is told by Harley Quinn herself, which is acceptable in small doses, but too much narration gets annoying and reflects lazy writing. This bad-girl is pursued by Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) who eventually gets suspended for her overzealous pursuit. Harley sarcastically comments, “No cop ever makes any good busts until after they’re suspended anyway.”

Ewan McGregor is hopelessly miscast as Gotham’s most nefariously narcissistic villain, Roman Sionis. He and his henchman, Zsasz (Chris Messina), put a target on a young girl while Sionis’ runner Black Canary (Jumee Smollett-Bell) reluctantly follows orders. As the city and the movie break into full chaos, the Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) appears on the scene with her own agenda. These unlikely birds of a feather must find common ground in order to take down this despicable criminal.

We don’t mind when a story is mostly an excuse to allow characters to do their thing, but in this case the lack of story is back filled with a ceaseless array of fight scenes, most of which had seemingly no purpose other than to display their vast proficiencies, again and again. The disjointed “F-bomb” dialog seems edited with a meat cleaver while the stunts and violence assault our senses with a sledgehammer.

This is not a serious character study as in Joaquin Phoenix’ “Joker” (2019). It was seemingly designed simply to celebrate a woman’s right to proudly produce the same onslaught of crass humor, bad taste and ultra-violent empty calories as men have done for years. Fair enough, but as rumors of a trilogy run rampant, we’re hopeful the vast potential might be translated into a more winning formula for these twisted sisters.

For those keeping score, this is the eighth film in the DC Extended Universe and first of three female led, female directed comic book movies to be released in 2020. Cathy Yan is the first Asian woman to direct a superhero movie and the versatile Margo Robbie’s acting resume now includes a superhero, network news producer, a bimbo, Queen Elizabeth I and Tonya Harding. She is deliciously wicked as Harley Quinn and we could not imagine anyone else in this role.

“Birds of Prey” is one hour forty-nine minutes and rated R for strong violence, language throughout and some sexual and drug material. The role of Harley Quinn was introduced in “Suicide Squad” and led to millions of Harley Quinn Halloween costumes. Robbie then pitched the idea to DC and Warner Brothers who agreed to this R rated action movie.

Jurnee Smollett, as Black Canary performs her own sultry singing during the film and fan boys were thrilled that Mary Elizabeth Winstead was cast for her resemblance to the character in the comic book, uh, graphic novel. Harley boasts with a quirky madness, “It feels good to be bad!” In that spirit, we might say she’s so bad, that she’s bad.

Ron’s Rating: D

Leigh’s Rating: F