Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn Review (Film, 2020)
Superhero films are common enough now that we expect certain elements to fall into place in the genre. We expect a stubborn but ultimately likable lead character to lose their way. We expect them to eventually rediscover their moral compass just in time to save the day. We expect a villain to have or develop incredibly strong powers that seem unstoppable. We expect our hero to learn something new about their abilities that make them a better person.
And, most importantly, we expect superpowers. Lots and lots of superpowers. There can be nothing common about who our lead is and what they do. If they do not have an actual superpower, their physical and mental capabilities have to be so strong that what they accomplish seems utterly impossible to achieve. They are aspirational figures that we can never really hope to become.
Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn refuses all of those standards. This is a cartoonish crime drama where a grand total of one character has anything resembling a superpower. Everyone else is just really lucky or trained in a specific weapon. The violence is merciless compared to the broad comedy and is tonally unexpected in a DC film.
I am not here to claim Birds of Prey is a great film; I don’t think it is. The pacing is inconsistent and the comic book flashback narration is overused. I am here to claim that we’ve never had a superhero film quite like Birds of Prey and the risks taken are worth celebrating. I had fun because the film’s goal was to be fun, silly, and exciting.
Harley Quinn is quite popular as a character considering she’s existed less than 30 years in the DC Universe. She was introduced as a random background character in the popular Batman: The Animated Series in an episode about the Joker. Harley Quinn was a sight gag, a female gangster in Joker’s gang dressed like an historical harlequin. The reaction to her character was strong enough that she quickly was given her own personality and relationship with the characters in the series, setting up things that took years in the print comics to become canon. She’s not just another gangster; she’s Joker’s girlfriend. She’s not just a sidekick; she’s a dangerous psychopath with no moral compass. She’s instantly attracted to people, wanting to be everyone’s best friend regardless of how poorly she’s treated by everyone else.
What she is not is a significant part of the Birds of Prey universe. Her strongest connection to that series is Detective Renee Montoya, another character created just for Batman: The Animated Series. Harley Quinn is more associated with Gotham City Sirens, featuring her on again, off again girlfriend Poison Ivy and OG Batman supervillain Catwoman. Sadly, that series got retconned out of existence during the New 52 initiative. Everything and nothing survived that reboot, with the will of fan basically forcing all of the popular ideas back into existence (like Harley Quinn being the GOAT; I will not be taking questions at this time). Basically, if Harley Quinn isn’t dating someone, she’s rarely connected to anyone else’s comic.
The Birds of Prey film is two strong ideas for a DC Universe film smashed into one feature. Harley Quinn’s popularity in Suicide Squad opened the door for not A-List DC characters to get films. That doesn’t mean that they were going to give Black Canary, Huntress, Renee Montoya, and Cassandra Cain their own super squad film with nothing to jump off of; it just means they were open to maybe kind of sort of using those characters at some point. This is Harley Quinn’s story featuring the Birds of Prey, not a Birds of Prey film featuring Harley Quinn. The ridiculous title is accurate for separating the two, though a semi-colon in the title would be more grammatically correct. Harley Quinn does not aim for emancipation because of the Birds of Prey; Harley Quinn’s emancipation happens during a story featuring the Birds of Prey.
Fans of Harley Quinn are going to get everything they ever wanted out of a Harley Quinn film. For one, they actually cover her origin in a satisfying way. There’s a way too cute animated comic explaining the origins of Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a psychiatrist who tried to make a name for herself by interviewing Gotham City’s most dangerous criminals in Arkham Asylum. She fell in love with the Joker and essentially drove herself insane to be with him. Now she’s an untouchable supervillain because no one messes with the Joker’s girl.
She also broke up with Joker before the start of the film and eventually builds up the courage to prove she’s single, which is perhaps the biggest mistake she’s ever made. Gotham is afraid of Joker’s girlfriend; Gotham is not afraid of Harley Quinn. Seemingly everyone in the city wants her dead when all she wanted was for people to know she can stand up on her own. She is a silly person. She declares a blood feud with someone over the loss of a breakfast sandwich. She is also incredibly intelligent and canonically the idea person behind some of Joker’s most successful schemes.
Birds of Prey features many Harley Quinn elements that fans will love. She adopts her beloved pet hyena. She fights with the giant sideshow mallet. Her weapons are silly and dangerous, such as a bean bag gun that launches paint powder and glitter. Her every action is inspired by the violence of vintage Saturday morning cartoons and she will fight to the death to protect any woman over a man.
Fans of the Birds of Prey team should be mostly happy, as well. This is their origin story. Black Canary, Renee Montoya, and Huntress all meet while trying to take down the mob boss Roman Sionis, better known as Black Mask. He controls the lower east side of Gotham City, accumulating wealth and the cut off human faces of his enemies. He wants a diamond that is etched with the offshore bank account information of a crime family gunned down 15 years before in a Gotham City turf war. Harley Quinn just happens to be an enemy of Sionis who also gets pulled into the diamond heist to save her own life.
So where does all of this leave us? This film is grounded in the organized crime but with a gimmick element that drives so much of the DC Universe. Black Canary is the only character in the Birds of Prey film with superpowers and she really doesn’t like to use them. This is a film where people fight with guns, crossbows, knives, baseball bats, mallets, fists, and anything they can get their hands on while wearing silly costumes. It’s a super stylized mob film with bright, cartoonish colors and lots of silly costumes. Nobody actually plans out anything and the result is utter chaos in every action sequence.
If you took away the costumes and color, this would be an average crime thriller that would eventually wind up on basic cable somewhere. However, the very existence of the modern Harley Quinn forces this into hard-R territory. The film is incredibly violent with no morals beyond stay true to your word.
There is a subtle narrative device used to connect all of the female characters in the film and it does a lot of heavy lifting to create this world. Every woman is underestimated in this story. Their achievements are never recognized as their own. The nearest male authority figure is given credit for their work, and if no knows what they can do, everyone else assumes a man did it. Even when they prove their worth, they’re underestimated by everyone else in the world. Their bonds are forged out of the realization that they’ve found their equals in the world regardless of what the world is willing to admit about them. It’s refreshing to see these relationships built out of mutual respect, not animosity, jealousy, or some outside guiding force. There’s a great sense of agency in this story that superhero films often miss.
We’re at the point in superhero film history that not every superhero film needs to be a revelation. Birds of Prey is a lower-budgeted film in the DC Universe with smaller stakes and a smaller built in audience. This is a Hail Mary pass after the critical failure of Suicide Squad and it shows that DC is listening to its fans about what they want. The result is a fun but uneven superhero film featuring a cast of actors clearly having a lot of fun onscreen. It’s just odd enough to stand out in a very crowded field for better or worse.
Birds of Prey… is currently playing in theaters.
