There's no grounding here, and not that a comic book movie needs to exist in reality, but there should be an effort to establish some sort of baseline of truth or connection with the audience.įight scenes - and there's no shortage of them - are all about the moves themselves and not who's delivering them, so they fail to register. The storytelling wants to be as unconventional as Harley, but the fractured way it unfolds makes a tale that is already difficult to connect with even more off-putting. She can't and viewers can't either from the madcap dullness of "Birds of Prey," which is reminiscent of 1995's "Tank Girl," another throw-everything-at-the-screen-and-see-what-sticks comic blunder.ĭirected by Cathy Yan from a screenplay by Christina Hodson ("Bumblebee"), "Birds of Prey" unfolds with a scrambled narrative where the pieces are all out of order, like a puzzle that was dropped on the floor and reassembled haphazardly. All Harley wants to do is eat a gooey bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich and she's got goons coming for her head from every which direction. Harley is looking to find herself and redefine who she is outside of her relationship, like "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," but with face tattoos.Įxcept her relationship with the Joker was the only thing keeping her safe in Gotham, and now that she's flying solo, her foes are out to collect old debts. Either way, sandwiched between Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix's incarnations of the character, Leto's quickly faded from memory.įittingly, Leto is absent here, discarded like a used napkin, and the proudly R-rated "Birds of Prey" is centered around Harley shedding herself of " Mistah J," as she refers to him in her bubbly, Long Island, 1920s gangster moll's accent. She was paired opposite Jared Leto's Joker, a surface-level take on the iconic "Batman" villain that was either destroyed in the editing room or doomed from the start. "Birds of Prey" plucks Margot Robbie's spirited Harley Quinn from 2016's "Suicide Squad," a thoroughly bad comic book misfire in which Harley stood out as the only character with moxie. The problem is that unless handled correctly, crazy is rather unruly, and unruly is no way to build a world. But is that all she is?Īpparently so, and "Birds of Prey" - full title: "Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)" - wants to be as unpredictable and zany as its heroine. That's the message that "Birds of Prey" hammers, and hammers, and hammers home so many times that by the 20-minute mark it becomes a dull, plodding thud in the front of your brain.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |