Birds of Prey Was Actually Pretty Good

My girlfriend has been bugging me for weeks to go see Birds of Prey with her and seeing as though I drag her to every single movie I want to see, I had to oblige. We ended up watching Joker on Friday and that movie was a masterpiece of modern cinematography so I could never expect anything to follow up to that. I was going into Birds of Prey hesitant and skeptical. As is the case with every movie released in the past 3 years, people who never plan on seeing the movie bitch about anything they can. Everything I saw and read online denounced it as woke trash, yet everyone I spoke to who saw it thoroughly enjoyed it. So I went in with low expectations hoping to be surprised and I was.

For a movie that needs to redeem the dumpster fire that was Suicide Squad and follow up behind the critically acclaimed Joker, Birds of Prey fell somewhere in the middle slightly favoring towards Joker. Casting was incredible, Margot Robbie is to Harley Quinn as Hugh Jackman is to Wolverine. I don’t want to see anyone else play either role, because they both do it so well. Robbie wasn’t given much to work with in Suicide Squad, just like the rest of the ensemble cast, but she really stood out playing the best live action Harley Quinn to date. The supporting cast (The Birds of Prey) all filled their roles well with Ell Jay Basco easily being the most likable character in the cast. That being said, the VAST MAJORITY of characters in this movie are deplorable scum which makes me understand why some people cry the slogan “get woke go broke”. It’s essentially a movie about shitty people coming together to triumph over even shittier people and the male cast have the role of being the shittiest. I mean we had Zsasz literally peeling faces off of families.

Obi Wan Kenobi…. I mean Ewan McGregor took up the mantle of Black Mask and we get a good chunk of time seeing how horrible of a character he is even outside the mask. Everything about this character makes you sick to your stomach watching, and McGregor did an incredible job selling how horrible he truly is. There wasn’t a single, slightly likable male character in the female driven movie, and guess what. That is absolutely fine for what it is. People can be upset and bitch on the internet all they want, but in reality, the movie is solid. Birds of Prey is a female led ensemble movie trying to make up for the shit trail left behind Suicide Squad and they did a wonderful job cleaning it up as best they could. The movie was shot incredibly, the soundtrack was great, the actors played their roles well, the story was cohesive enough, and it ultimately surprised me in how good it really was. That being said, some of the jokes fell flat, there was some weird continuity shit going on in the middle that didn’t line up, but I genuinely think all of it gets overshadowed by how great the fight choreography is.

Birds of Prey is absolutely worth a watch, this isn’t GhostBusters 2016 and I’ll even defend that because it’s a GhostBusters movie and I love some good ghost busting. The moral of this story is that you shouldn’t listen to anything people say on the internet. Fuck it, don’t even listen to what I’m saying, but if a movie interests you, go see it. It will never be as good as Joker, but Birds of Prey certainly can be viewed as a saving grace following Suicide Squad.

Birds of Prey

4 Crossbow Bolts to the Larynx out of 5