BIRDS OF LAME!

(My review of the motion picture, ‘Birds of Prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one Harley Quinn'.)

Here are TEN reasons why ‘Birds of Prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one Harley Quinn)’ isn’t very good:

1. The Character of Harley Quinn is like a kind of high powered weed that will throttle the life out of any other character, unless they’re well written and performed. The characters in Birds of Prey are NOT well written or performed.
2. The concept of Birds of Prey as a super team of mega women only knits together in the last 20 minutes of a 1 hour, 49 minute film. They have precisely one scene of banter as a unit.
3. Black Canary looks like Leona Lewis, and conducts herself in the manner of Leona Lewis. She has arguably the most screen time after Margot Robbie, and she just sucks the life out of it. Well, she doesn’t: the plot does. But you get what I mean. Also she only does her sonic blast thing the once.
4. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is alright, but she only has about 15 minutes of screen time, all in. And her big MC Hammer pants look daft.
5. I don’t give a fuck about Rosie Perez.
6. The whole film is a series of record scratches, and “Wait! Hold up… Let’s rewind!” I know Quinn gives you a bit of a license for erratic jumping around, but fucking hell. Let the story play out in order occasionally.
7. The mid-torture, Marylyn Monroe dream sequence made my scrotum retract with embarrassment.
8. It’s too fucking long, and Ewan McGregor’s voice is annoying.
9. It almost completely runs out of steam half an hour in. I would’ve bailed, but I wanted to watch the whole thing in order to have a go at it.
10. Because of the weakness of every other story aspect, the film needs to be ALL Margot Robbie, all the time. However – and it’s a BIG however – a little bit of Harley Quinn goes a looooong way. You get fucking sick of her nonsense. As such, the film is caught in its own trap. It needs more Quinn, yet Quinn is annoying. And there in lies the rub.

CONCLUSION

If the Harley Quinn trilogy were a sandwich:

• ‘The Suicide Squad’ (2021) would be a really expensive bit of fancy bread;
• ‘Birds of Prey, etc.’ would be an arguably quite nice bit of ham that someone had wiped their arse with, and
• ‘Suicide Squad’ (2016) would be a bulky, corn riddled, human turd. Covered in wee.

Thanks for reading.

TC