Joker is nominated for an awards season-high 11 Oscars at Sunday’s ceremony, but Mr. J is nowhere to be found in DC Comics’ new release this weekend Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). Our two Utah-based comic book fans went to see it, what’d you think fellas?
Madison: Margot Robbie returns as Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). Last we saw Robbie swinging a bat and hammer was in the disastrous Suicide Squad so I was a little worried to see DC trying to resurrect what I deemed as dead IP. But I was delightfully surprised by Birds of Prey. It really seems like DC has done an about-face.
Cole: Off the top, I cannot explain how much I love long meandering titles like this movie’s got. Way better than Suicide Squad or even worse The Suicide Squad. But really the inconsistency of DC movies has been maddening for a fan of the characters. This one is on the good side of the wide DC spectrum for sure.
Madison: From the opening exposition, it’s clear that DC is continuing its march out of dark seriousness. Instead of rehashing Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey opens with a cartoon montage of Harley Quinn’s life. The scene does work on multiple fronts because it’s obviously funny, but it tells you that what is to come leans on the cartoonishness of Harley Quinn. And this is all for the better.
Cole: Harley and Rosie Perez‘ Renee Montoya were both born on a cartoon, so it’s fitting. Harley also spends the whole movie talking to the audience after introducing us to her world. And it never felt like too much. This movie has more than one similarity to Deadpool that I’ll talk about here, and it starts from the very beginning.
Madison: She only looked at the camera a handful of times, but each time I felt that oddness characters breaking the fourth wall should elicit. With Deadpool, his whole schtick is based on that, so we become calloused to it quickly. But Harley’s self-awareness gives her an intelligence her otherwise zany-antics would imply. The film goes out of its way to reaffirm that Harley has a Ph.D. and is actually way more with-it than the first glance would say.
Cole: And she’s not alone in the qualified badass lady department. The other sirens of Gotham City are slowly introduced as Black Canary, Huntress, and a more veteran and hardened Renee Montoya than we saw in Batman: The Animated Series.
Madison: Oh, Black Canary and Huntress, how my heart melted. Both Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Jurnee Smollett-Bell absolutely matched the character energy of Margot Robbie. You’d think that while Harley chews the scenery, the other characters would be dimly lit and poorly written, but each of the birds of prey were their own people. Huntress is a dark horse that becomes a favorite quickly in the third act.
Cole: Let’s be clear, this is a comedy-action movie in that order and all the actresses (joined by Ewan McGregor‘s villain Black Mask) are on the same page. But along with the laughs, there were plenty of action sequences for fans of kicking butt.
Madison: What I loved about this movie is that Director Cathy Yan did not make it a sultry-sexy fest. Not that Harley, Canary, and Huntress aren’t extremely competent and face-meltingly attractive. But in clumsier hands, Birds of Prey could’ve just been another male-gaze action candy. Just as in Wonder Woman, the male-gaze is notably absent. As well, Yan stages and negotiates the camera work wonderfully. There’s more than one shot that I thought, “ooh, I haven’t seen that kind of shot before.”
Cole: I mean. I’ll slow the roll, this wasn’t breaking any action ground. They used the same random slow motion right before the punch/kick/crotch-shot lands over and over. A lot like Wonder Woman actually. Remember how she would slide, go to slow motion, camera spins, then she punches? They use that here too. A lot.
Madison: I agree that the structure of the action wasn’t exactly new, though I do think the scenes themselves were imaginative and creative. Yan doesn’t use the whole fast-cut fight scene that other directors use to hide that the actor is not actually doing the scene. Go watch some Stuntmen React videos on YouTube and you’ll know exactly what I mean. (Cole: I’ve seen 5 Jason Bournes, I know exactly what you mean.) The camera often just park itself and watch the fight take place, with some cuts, of course, to keep things interesting, but for the most part the action is legible. I try to pay über attention to the fight scenes, and I was impressed at how many of the stunts it looked as though each actress was actually doing herself.
Cole: The most action-packed scene is the very end when the ladies pass around the little girl McGuffin. Oh yeah, the plot is similar to Deadpool 2 too. Anti-hero shows their softer side protecting a foul-mouthed youth in revolt that is being pursued by an even badder dude. Don’t believe me, check out when Madison and I got together to review that movie.
Madison: Speaking of that little girl McGuffin, played by Ella Jay Basco, I especially want to mention how she exemplifies the great editing and writing of this movie. We bounce around the timeline as Harley narrates different bits, then realizes she has to explain something before she continues. But the pick-pocket kid shows up in all the different time-lines, BEFORE we even realize she will be central to the plot.
Cole: Definitely the clearest structure I’ve seen in a while. Act 1 has all the jumping introductions, Act 2 gets everyone fighting until, Act 3 has it all hit the fan at the carnival in time for our heroines to come together. Harley (and all the girls that will be Harley for Halloween) get a costume change for each act too.
Madison: And the addition of the roller skate in the final scene actually served a purpose and wasn’t just a gimmick. There were many points of action that had all the surprise and brutality we’ve come to love from our comic movies.
Cole: Reviewer’s note: In case you missed it in the advertising, this is an R-Rated movie. Brutality is actually brutal with blood and four-letter words fly a lot more than your average DCEU flick.
Madison: Ture. I absolutely missed that and thought they had chewed through their PG-13 f-words really fast. Overall, I was very happy with Birds of Prey. I was expecting another DC flop, but what we got was more Shazam! (we reviewed that together too!) than Suicide Squad in the best of ways. And with no other film to really compete with it for a while, I also expect Birds of Prey to make plenty of money.
Cole: We are out of January and finally got the first good movie of the year. If you enjoy the comedic comic-book-adjacent vibe that Deadpool brought, you’ll love Birds of Prey.
Birds of Prey released nationwide February 7th. Get your tickets and expect it to have a long life in the theaters.