Hey everyone! Here's my review of Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Before I start it, I have to say that my expectations for this movie were EXTREMELY low when I sat down to watch this with my sister a couple of weeks ago. And they just got lower and lower as the movie went on. As you'll see in the review, I like this movie, but it's not a good movie nor is it actually a Birds of Prey movie either. So let's get into it.
I didn't know what to really expect when I sat down to watch Birds of Prey with my sister at her place two Saturday nights ago. But what I got wasn't a Birds of Prey movie. I got a Harley Quinn movie where the Birds of Prey are superfluous at best. As I said to my sister after the movie, it was a good Harley Quinn movie but a bad Birds of Prey movie. I mean, it's not a great movie by any means, but it's at least a decent Harley Quinn movie.
I'm a fan of DC Comics, mostly Batman, so to see this many DC Comics/Batman characters in a movie together is great. Especially because, with the exception of Harley, many of these characters are unknown to the non-comic book reading audience. The problem is none of the characters are even close to who they are in the comics. Except for Harley Quinn, and Black Mask, played by Ewan MacGregor. Maybe Dinah Lance, but even she feels out of character. I love Mary Elizabeth Winstead and have ever since I saw her in Sky High (2005), but that's not Helena Bertinelli. Even her backstory isn't Helena Bertinelli's backstory in any medium, be it comics, movies or TV shows. I'm fine with adaptation, but this isn't adaptation, this is creating a completely new character and giving her the name of the character from the comics. The same thing goes for Cassandra Cain. I'm not a fan of that character, who was Batgirl in the comics from 1998 until 2009, but the version we see in the movie has nothing to do with the character from the comics.
Having said that, the cast is pretty good. The only cast members I am really familiar with are Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ewan MacGregor as I've seen them as various characters over the years outside of the roles I was introduced to them with. I've only ever seen Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn so I'm not overly familiar with her work.
The story on the other hand was extremely hard to follow and trying to include EVERYONE'S backstory made things way too slow and meandering. It wasn't bad, but I think the script could've benefitted from being tightened up more than it was. Almost as if someone wrote two drafts before turning it in for approval from Warner Bros. and that's it. The writer, Christina Hodson, had only written three other movies when she was hired to write Birds of Prey and that includes Bumblebee. Now I'd like to believe that the way Birds of Prey turned out is due to studio interference from Warner Bros. but there's no indication of that in any source I can find online, unlike with Suicide Squad (2016). So I think it's as I said before. Hodson wrote the script and gave it a single pass before writing the next draft, which ended up being the final draft. I hope that's not the case, but the way the story is, doesn't exactly give me reason to think otherwise.
Honestly, I can't really recommend this movie. If you're a fan of the comics, you're going to be annoyed as hell that they changed so much in the adaptation. If you've never read the comics, you might enjoy it, but it all depends on whether you like meandering storytelling or not. I gave it a watch because I'm a fan of the comics.
And that's it with this review. Next up is a movie I was interesting in seeing, but had very low hopes for before I sat down to watch it. So join me in a little bit for my review of Free Guy, the most recent movie I've reviewed so far on either of my blogs.
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