Birds of Prey (2020)
By The Gorilla
This review contains spoilers
I would like to tell you about the plot of Birds of Prey (2020), but I’m afraid Harley Quinn will do that for me. Trust me. She will.
Every scene is interrupted by her narration, which constantly stops the action to jump back in time and tell you why that moment you were just watching was important. It felt like a poor version of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), and by the fifth interruption and flashback I was ready to leave.
I stood up and awkwardly climbed on the back seat. But I couldn’t see well in the dark, and I didn’t want to ruin the experience for the other people in attendance, so I grumpily sat back down.
But wait a minute! How did I end up here? Well, to know that we need to go back in time just a tiny bit.
Last week I went to the Zoo to see my friend Aslan, the lion. Since he bit that kid for saying that there is no climate crisis, he’s been in a cage, and is kept under tight observance. Things are not easy for him now, so I brought him some snacks (no drinks allowed), and stayed to chat.
While we were joking around about how much America is tickling China’s pickle with the release of Mulan (2020), a zookeeper passed by and accused me of sexism. I think she heard me, a male gorilla, saying Mulan, a female name, and found that unforgivable. I tried to explain myself, but she had already called the Social Justice police, and in a heartbeat I was brought in front of the Court of Public Opinion. I was found guilty on all counts, especially on those I didn’t commit, and was ordered to attend re-education courses and carry out community service. Community service meant I had to watch Birds of Prey by Cathy Yan for at least twenty minutes.
I loudly protested, and the judge ordered me to watch thirty minutes of it. I was quiet after that.
So I was sent to the non binary, trigonometry, hocus pocus cinema, and sat down in the screening room with the other inmates. The lights dimmed and the movie started.
That’s why I’m here.
Oh, I think Harley just stopped talking! OK, quick! So, here’s the plot in two words: it sucks.
But more than that: Harley Quinn needs to find the little thief Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) because she stole a very important diamond. Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) wants that diamond, and if Harley Quinn brings it to him, he will forget all the bad stuff she did to him, and will spare her life. On her journey to steal from the stealer, Harley meets a wacky group of cardboard characters that tick all the boxes for shallow, “female-empowerment” icons and diversity requirements.
And if you think this summary is superficial or insulting, wait until you watch the movie.
Birds of Prey is the newest film installment in the age of hyper-sensitivity and political correctness. In that, the focus is not really on the story, or on a showcase of great cinematic craftsmanship, but on the social statement it tries to preach. In that regard, it is quite interesting to see how everyone involved in the movie seems to be putting greater emphasis on the female-lead cast as their main selling point, rather than on the story.
But most problems stem exactly from that: poor direction and a subpar screenplay. I have to hand it to the screenwriter, Christina Hodson: she wrote something worse than Bumblebee (2018)—though at least that movie was somewhat enjoyable if one just switched their brains off. Birds of Prey, on the other hand, is impossible to enjoy, with your brain turned on or off.
Every male character is a sexist, despicable imbecile and every woman knows Kung Fu, puts men in their place, and works well with each other. Now, if that were the only pitfall of the picture, I would have deemed all this a genre film and tried to enjoy it anyway. The problem is that Birds of Prey makes no sense and every character is thinner than paper.
At some point in the movie, Harley Quinn literally picks up Cassandra Cain, takes her home, sits down on the couch with her, and thinks: “I was really starting to enjoy the company of this little girl.” After five minutes of having met her. After. Five. Minutes.
Five.
Well, at least now we know why Mr J. dumped her. She is a clingy psycho. As is director Cathy Yan, since she expects us to give a rotten banana about the relationship between Harley and Cassandra just because the protagonist told us that.
Five minutes later, a group of mercenaries gather around Harley’s house and bomb her apartment. She and the kid escape with no wounds, but nobody comes after them, despite the fact that they are literally standing on the rubbles of her house.
The fight scenes, a predominant aspect of the picture, are stylishly shot, but poorly choreographed and nonsensical. To retrieve Cassandra, Harley Quinn breaks into the police station with a toy gun, kicks some ass, nobody shoots her, and everyone obliges to her demands even though she is slower than my dead Grandma Gorilla at recharging. May she rest in peace. Oh, yeah, and Harley Quinn is not even shooting bullets. So there is absolutely no reason why policemen wouldn’t shoot a famous criminal like her. Apart from, that is, a very thick plot armor.
Afterwards, a gang of mercenary bikers barges into the same station, shoots at Harley and the annoying kid with Uzis, and, after having missed them, go: “We need them alive!” What? Seriously? You guys just threw everything at the two, even your Harleys (Davidson), and now you want them alive? Why? Why did you shoot in the first place?
Ah, forget it. Moving on.
During the fist fights between Harley (Quinn) and any kind of disposable henchman, I could count at least five instances where gunmen literally stepped into kicking range despite having her clearly in scope, didn’t take the shot (take the shot!), and got kicked in the face.
In the final showdown at the Luna Park, the merry-go-lucky group of cardboards come together in a matter of seconds to fight about a trillion armed men. The assassins, who look like they are coming straight out of the Purge, barge into the building shooting at everything that moves. Yet the whole matter is pretty much resolved with a series of grotesque fist fights between the cardboards and the gunmen. What happened to the guns? Harley didn’t have anything to say about that. But she did fight wearing roller skates, so I think that kind of answers my question.
All in all, every fight scene just looked like a bunch of boys who want to let the cute girl win in hope of asking her out afterwards. Some slanderers (not me) might even say this was quite the ironic representation of Third Wave (and Half) Feminism.
There were, however, a couple of positive aspects, namely Ewan McGregor’s fully committed performance and the short length of the film. But they were not enough.
In summary, the film trades a logical plot, or simple character development, for heavy-handed editing, punk Cinematography, stylish production design, and a very loud soundtrack. Birds of Prey is high on attitude but low on substance.
And since nowadays, the only rating that the big production houses care about is the amount of money a movie makes and not its actual quality—was the box office bomb deserved? Yes, absolutely yes.
After I went back home, I ate a bunch of alcoholic bananas and turned on the TV, in the hopes of washing away this abomination of a movie with a new episode of Harley Quinn.
Seriously, do you guys want to see the same concept of the film done right? With Harley Quinn getting over Joker and trying to stand up for herself? Check out the DC’s Harley Quinn TV show. It treads the same route as the movie, but it actually has good humor, funny violence, and more realistic characters. Most of all, it doesn’t have its agenda so on the nose to sound preachy and shallow. The creators just want to tell a good story, and that’s what makes the whole difference.
That night, I had a very gorilla sleep.
The Gorilla watches movies, The Gorilla thinks, The Gorilla does reviews. He is very opinionated, which sometimes drives his girlfriend, The Panda, crazy. He also likes alcoholic bananas, back scratches, and long naps in the sun.
