Joker's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: "Birds of Prey" a snappy, rollickingly R-rated blast with Margot Robbie born to play Harley Quinn


Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)
109 min.
Screened on February 5, 2020 at UA Riverview Plaza in Philadelphia, PA
Release Date: February 7, 2020 (Wide)

In David Ayer’s sloppily constructed 2016 mess “Suicide Squad” that amassed a bunch of DC super-villains, one of the film’s few bright spots was the Joker’s psychiatrist-turned-girlfriend-and-partner-in-crime Harley Quinn, brought vividly to life by Margot Robbie. She owned the role with a lunatic energy and a mischievous glint in her eye that were downright infectious. Now, Harley Quinn leaves the Joker in the dust and gets her own movie with “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn,” a rollickingly R-rated firecracker of a DC comic-book action-comedy made with a giddy enthusiasm by all involved. Director Cathy Yan, making her first studio feature, and screenwriter Christina Hodson (2018’s “Bumblebee”) bring a joyous, free-wheeling sensibility to all of “Birds of Prey,” and any film whose anarchic female protagonist has a giant crush on a hangover-curing breakfast sandwich is already working into this writer’s heart (and stomach).

Following her break-up with Mr. J, Harley Quinn is ready to re-establish her own identity, even if she feels all alone in Gotham City. To get much-needed closure and “update her relationship status,” she gets loaded and blows up the Ace Chemicals plant. This incident tips off alcoholic GCPD detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), who already has a full plate investigating a series of cross-bow murders carried out by a vigilante, Helena Bertinelli (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who would prefer to be called “The Huntress.” Before Harley knows it, every thug she has ever had a grievance with is after her, including club-owning mob boss Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor). Once orphaned pickpocket Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) steals Roman’s diamond (read: a McGuffin) and swallows it, songbird Dinah Lance/Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), who becomes Roman’s driver against her will, has to track Cain down but plans to protect her. Harley then gets entangled with the finding of the diamond and Cain, while Roman puts a bounty on both of their heads.

Sheer grinning-ear-to-ear fun but also character-based, “Birds of Prey” buzzes along at a blazing pace from the word go. Setting its cheeky tone off the top, the film's vibrant animated opening sequence cleverly catches the viewer up to speed on how baby Harleen Quinzel was traded for a six pack of beer and then became a “badass broad.” The breakneck voice-over storytelling device of Harley breaking the fourth wall falls right on the edge of being exhausting, but it's so snappy and dictates when to nimbly pinball around in the timeline of the film's plot proper and then circle back. Margot Robbie, the obvious centerpiece of the film, is fantabulous in the role she was born to play. Wild-eyed and criminally unhinged, Robbie's Harley is still a root-worthy antiheroine with an accessible, little-girl-at-heart sweetness and a charismatic hoot with dead-on comic timing when tossing off one-liners. With a Ph.D under her belt, Harley also has the superpower of reading people, so there's an intelligence underneath all that craziness. The love she gives to her pet hyena Bruce (a tip of the hat to Mr. Wayne, possibly?) as if it were a cuddly kitten is somehow adorable, and her rhapsody over a bodega bacon, egg and cheese sandwich is hilariously relatable (and shot lovingly in mouth-watering food-porn close-up). There’s even an inspired musical interlude, where Harley impersonates Marilyn Monroe’s performance of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from 1953’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

Unlike the relationships in "Suicide Squad," Harley and her four new girlfriends achieve a bond that feels earned rather than scripted. When Harley says to Cassandra Cain, “You made me want to be a less terrible person,” the sentiment actually rings true. Even though the film is called “Birds of Prey,” Dinah Lance/Black Canary and Helena Bertinelli/The Huntress aren’t defined as deeply as one would hope and exist to live in Harley’s orbit. Still, a fiercely magnetic Jurnee Smollett-Bell and an amusingly deadpan Mary Elizabeth Winstead get plenty of moments to shine, respectively, as Black Canary carries herself with an inner strength and The Huntress is more socially awkward than she first suggests. Rosie Perez plays hardened but facetious as Renee Montoya, a character who could be a walking ’80 cop cliché (and you better believe Harley acknowledges it), and newcomer Ella Jay Basco has a no-nonsense naturalism as Cassandra Cain. Finally, on the antagonistic side, Ewan McGregor revels in the off-kilter flamboyance of the sadistic Roman Sionis in a way audiences will not be used to, and a nearly unrecognizable Chris Messina is deranged, skeevy and dangerous as Roman’s henchman Victor Zsasz.

Steering clear of the doom and gloom of past DC comic-book entries, "Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn" is the studio's most confident and fully realized picture with its own madcap, self-aware tone and splashy, glitter-punk visual style. Action set-pieces are cleanly staged with a violent playfulness and a bone-crunching brutality. Considering the film's caffeinated energy level is frenzied enough, it helps greatly that director Cathy Yan and cinematographer Matthew Libatique allow the fights to play out, “John Wick” and “Atomic Blonde”-style, rather than editing the dazzling choreography down to choppy bits. A highly entertaining attack on Harley in a police storage room has our favorite baseball-bat wielder getting a boost when a mound of cocaine gets fired at and releases its magical stimulants. The third-act showdown is particularly fun and exciting, too, making inventive use of a funhouse within abandoned carnival “Booby Trap” and featuring an amusing and very sensible throwaway detail where Harley offers a hair tie to Black Canary, whose frizzy hair keeps getting in her field of vision while kicking ass. Housing a hyperactive, candy-colored approach that reflects Harley herself, “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn” is worth celebrating as a glitter-bomb blast of a crowd-pleaser.

Grade: B +

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