Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
★★★ — Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Cathy Yan became the first woman of colour to direct a DC film when she took this on, a notable milestone given how male-dominated the superhero genre had been up to that point. Her debut feature, the micro-budget Dead Pigs (2018), had played Sundance and caught Warner Bros.' attention, making Birds of Prey a considerable step up in scale. The film spun off from Margot Robbie's turn as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad (2016), with Robbie also serving as a producer through her LuckyChap Entertainment banner, giving her unusual creative leverage for a studio comic-book picture. At a relatively modest $75 million for the genre, it landed in cinemas in February 2020, just weeks before the pandemic effectively closed theatres worldwide, which complicated any fair reading of its box-office performance.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) arrives with the chaotic energy of a sugar rush, colourful, loud, and initially intoxicating. Margot Robbie IS Harley Quinn, full stop. She embodies the character with such anarchic charm and wounded vulnerability that it's impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. Ewan McGregor, meanwhile, played with gleeful menace as Black Mask, a villain so petulantly unhinged he almost steals the show. The soundtrack slaps, the neon-drenched aesthetic pops, and there's genuine fun to be had in Harley's post-Joker liberation narrative. On a first watch, it's easy to get swept up in the mayhem. But the film's foundations wobble. Beyond Robbie and McGregor, the casting feels curiously mismatched. The rest of the "girl gang" never quite clicks as a unit, their chemistry forced rather than organic. The action sequences, lack the kinetic inventiveness that might have elevated them beyond serviceable. And there's an odd tonal dissonance throughout: the film seems simultaneously aware of and trapped by its own absurdity, teetering between genuine character work and self-parody without ever deciding which it wants to be. At times, it feels less like a cohesive story and more like a series of music video vignettes loosely strung together. A messy but intermittently delightful Harley Quinn showcase that succeeds more as a character study than as a superhero ensemble. Robbie's star power and McGregor's delicious villainy carry it through the rougher patches, and the feminist-lite messaging lands with reasonable sincerity. But it's a film that knows how to make an entrance without quite knowing where to go afterwards. Entertaining, uneven, and ultimately more style than substance, but what style it is.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2020 | Watched: 2026-04-01
Where to watch (UK)
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Physical: Amazon UK
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