Reviews Film / Birds Of Prey 2020

A typical Feminist Fantasy with cliche action tropes and a predictable plot, Harley Quinn is NOT a good substitute for Deadpool

Birds of Prey despite having a long title is quite a short movie, it's not even 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Margot Robbie's character Harley doesn't have much personality to her other than being this crazy girl who loves going on crimes, shooting/killing enemies who wronged her, easily angering other people, so the screen writers always put Harley in a position of happily eating food and talking about food, making her a materialist by having her admiring purses and luxurious goods, watching Looney Tunes and owning a pet hyena.

I tend to interpret that Harley Quinn was DC's response to how much money Marvel made off of Deadpool. But the difference is Deadpool is actually funny, he can crack a joke about any topic he's given and he has a much better knowledge of pop culture while Harley's idea of being funny is sharing Twizzlers orally with a hyena like "Lady and Tramp spaghetti", poking fun at her own hilariously abusive childhood with cartoons and telling the audience just how many people she pissed off and now want revenge on her.

Harley blowing up the ACE Chemicals compound with a gas truck does create a colorful explosion, but it only stalls the plot and it's hardly interesting to the viewer. The investigation and police scenes involving Montoya and her superiors have very banal dialogue, I couldn't wait for those scenes to end because their chatter seemed too uninteresting and felt more like an actual police conversation than a truly important scene. It's all just talk about evidence, forensics and progress being made in tracking crime.

Though the flat characterization of Harley Quinn isn't the weakest point of the movie, but rather it's that Harley always keeps kicking the gun right out of the hands of the mercenaries sent out to kill her. This is a common thing found in action movies, but I don't find much joy in watching this repeatedly.