On Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn

The movie is out and the review will be up soon on Cultofwhatever. In the meantime here’s a portion of my thoughts as well as the final score…

The movie’s greatest failure is in its structure. For some reason, the story here begins with act two, and only flashes-back to the happenings of act one. In other words, the movie starts at 100mph then screeches to a half for an act one flashback, then revs up again to 100mph, then stops, then starts, then stops, etc.

It's not until the end of the first hour that we even get to what the plot is about.

I simply can't understand why this movie was put together the way it was, with act two and one overlapping each other and then, without a proper middle to follow the beginning (since the beginning and the middle happened in parallel), the film just shifts to a looooong third act to wrap everything up, all the while spending only as much time as is absolutely necessary (which, apparently, is very little) with the rest of the characters named in the title of the film.

Even with the structural flaws, this movie would have been improved substantially had Harley been reduced to a supporting role. Her character simply isn't made for a leading role; she's--by design--too obnoxious to carry a film.

6/10 – I guess it’s better than Suicide Squad, but the film would have been better with more conventional editing and with the Birds playing a more prominent role.