I suffered through “Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey” so you don’t have to

Having already witnessed Margot Robbie’s unfortunate Brooklyn accent in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Suicide Squad,” I had low expectations for DC Comic’s newest attempt at competing with Marvel — “Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey.” Then the trailer, depicting Harley shooting villains with confetti instead of bullets in a misguided attempt at female empowerment, only sent my expectations lower.

Pre-existing biases aside, I hoped the movie would at least offer a positive message on feminism. Or characters that I could connect with. Or a followable plot. 

But Harley Quinn’s bad jokes and the unfocused narrative didn’t just make the movie mediocre — they made it not worth seeing.

In true DC Cinematic Universe style, the movie mimicked Marvel’s box-office busting method of combining various characters and their backstories to create a loveable superteam (see “Avengers,” “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “X-Men.”) Except Birds of Prey’s backstories were severely underdeveloped, and the superteam’s lack of chemistry made me feel like they were a group of work acquaintances. 

The movie begins when Harley Quinn is dumped by the Joker, so without her boyfriend’s protection Harley is suddenly held accountable for her stealing sprees and unnecessary killings (wait, actions have consequences?) At this point, the girl empowerment promised by the movie’s trailers seems like an empty promise as the breakup sends Harley into a spiral — crying, guzzling Cheez Whiz and even blowing up a building. Definitely not the “strong, independent female” agenda.

Now that Harley’s enemies are out for some blue and pink blood, the movie shifts its efforts to developing the backstories of Harley’s soon-to-be sidekicks — a task apparently difficult for director Cathy Yan. 45 minutes too many were spent jumping from one sidekick’s story to another, which would’ve been far more effective if they were simply weaved into the story. The movie seems to jokingly imply that this is due to Harley’s poor narrating abilities, but I’d chalk it up to bad writing.

And after sitting through a movie full of random side-stories that were too cliché and lackluster to capture my interest, we finally see the scene that the trailers focused on — Harley and her girls team up and fight the Black Mask, her most dangerous enemy. This fight provided some much needed interesting content, thanks to incredible costume design and some talented fight choreographers (but no thanks to the writing — the Black Mask’s cliché evil villain lines did not impress.)

The scene only verified my suspicions throughout the movie — that Yan was using flashy scenes to distract viewers from the 20-minute-long asides that resembled a 4th grader’s creative writing story. Cool outfits, well-filmed fight montages and expensive-looking scenes were wasted on the horrible writing — Yan’s “lets-just-throw-money-at-the-problem” tactic couldn’t fix the obvious.

All things — terrible writing and unempowering “empowerment” — considered, Margot Robbie’s acting was probably the highlight of the movie. But she only stood out because the Black Mask’s actor Ewan McGregor’s interpretation of the insane villain was reminiscent of a community theatre production.

“Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey” was advertised as a turn for the female supervillains to come together against the patriarchal villain industry. Come on DC comics, if you’re going to hop on the girl power trend, at least give your female characters some rationality and tell the story in a plot, not a bedazzled stream-of-consciousness.