Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey || Movie Review

As Boring As Suicide Squad?

All the posters are pretty amazing.

Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey or Birds of Prey AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN is just a Harley Quinn movie directed by Cathy Yan having a cast full of pretty women such as Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollet-Bell and Rosie Perez. 

I wasn't interested in the movie at all but still gave it a go today and believe me if you hated the 2016s Suicide Squad then you should probably skip this movie. I don't have much good stuff to talk about and this whole review will be me ranting over this painfully boring movie.

What I liked?

We all can agree that no one else can play Harley Quinn's character as good as Margot Robbie. Her acting is the saving grace of this film. Other actresses have also acted well. They did best with all those cheesy dialogues and one-liners. They were able to make me laugh a little once in a while.

Another thing that I like is a few action sequences. Specifically, the action sequence shot at the police station. The acting, cinematography and the appropriate use of slow-mo shots made this sequence a treat for eyes.

The set pieces were good. They made the action sequences much better and improved the scope for the stunts.

The opening animation segment was good. This review would have been different altogether if the whole movie was animated.

The outfits were good.

I'm really trying my best to tell the better parts of the movie.

What I Disliked?

• The Plot & The Direction

Harley Quinn is known as Joker's girlfriend and that's it. After her breakup with Joker in this movie, she now tries to create her own identity as an individual criminal. Then a few things happen, this young kid swallows a diamond that contains some kind of map or something and Harley Quinn ends up being with this kid. Then somehow she ends up teaming up with Huntress, Black Canary, and Montanna to take down the Black mask. And that's all there is to the story. I'm still trying to find a good plot here.

The movie tries too hard to pull another Deadpool 2 but it doesn't work. At all.

Harley is constantly narrating the story and it feels boring at times. Four or five times she broke the fourth wall and it was not funny. Now her narration can be used to defend this boring movie but even then it remains a bad film plot-wise.

Now I have never read any Birds of Prey or Harley Quinn comics but I'm familiar with the source material. This never feels as a Birds of Prey movie. They are just there to make the movie reach its climax. No character development at all. Same issues that made Suicide Squad such a boring film.

My introduction to Black Mask was when I played Batman: Arkham Origins back in 2013 and the Black Mask in that game is nothing like the Black Mask we get in this movie. While that Roman Sionis is a rich, crazy and intelligent gangster; the one we get in this movie is just a parody of that character. He was in the movie so that all females could unite against him. I cannot explain how stupid this character is in the movie.

Victor Zsasz is also in the movie working as the right-hand man of Sionis.  Both him and Sionis were wasted in this movie and there is no possibility of them ever coming back into the DC Extended Universe.

Also don't expect any sort of feminism in this movie just because it is directed by a woman and the main cast is all female.

Final Verdict

Don't watch this movie. The movie had many opportunities to do something different with the characters, with the source material and sadly they did something different which is nowhere as good as source material nor is original to work as a standalone movie. This is definitely a step up from Suicide Squad but still is not a good movie.

If you like the Suicide Squad or like Margot Robbie's performance, then watch it. I did not like this movie nor did my younger brother and he puts it's very simply: it's boring.