Prepare to be boggled and bored by ‘Birds of Prey’

DC is once again dipping their toes into the cinematic universe game with the newest installment of their DC Extended Universe, “Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).” Following a breakup with the Joker, Harley Quinn is on the run from a vengeful variety of nasty gangsters, thugs and other villains who she has done wrong to over the years, with ruthless crimelord Black Mask leading the hunt.

She finds herself involved with a pick-pocketing youngster named Cassandra Cain during the chaos and Quinn — plus her assembled team of similarly in-peril women — end up fighting to protect the younger girl when Mask decides to turn his attention to Cain.

Following the atrocity that was 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” of which this film acts as a spin-off to, one would hope that the DCEU would have learned from their mistakes. And while there are very slight improvements made here, “Birds of Prey” is a largely disappointing venture that embarrasses itself in its attempts to connect with audiences. Featuring a fast moving plot and cocaine-fueled pacing that beats you over the head with a desperate attempt to appear cool, the movie hardly takes any time to breathe, shoving in a wide array of characters and plot points that rarely leave an impression.

This is largely also due to the movie’s tone, which comes off as immature to say the least. Despite its R-rating, the film rarely takes advantage of it to enhance its narrative or atmosphere, rather opting to use this as a leeway to drop f-bombs and sex jokes that feel to be appealing to the 13-year-old demographic who believe this is what a good R-rated movie is like.

Even when taking away this irritating aesthetic, the film’s plot is weak on its own right. The plot feels aimless for much of the film, jumping between Quinn, Mask and various vignettes of the rest of the cast doing their best to build some sort of character, all leading up to a blandly conventional narrative with little to surprise. To top it off, the film heavily relies on a variety of lazy ways to deliver exposition, including the same title card method used in “Suicide Squad” and an annoying amount of narration from Quinn herself.

This jumbled up story and execution makes for the eventual team up to feel strangely awkward. The combination of the inorganic chemistry between the cast, the little time to develop many of them as characters and the movie’s cringe-worthy tone, result in a highly ineffective finale that will leave you bored and awaiting the credits to hit.

While the film’s presentation isn’t quite as incompetent as “Suicide Squad,” it nevertheless contains many of the same issues. The colorful cinematography and production design are admittedly quite an improvement in some places, but a lot of it is ruined thanks to the simply terrible editing. In line with its break-neck storytelling, the editing attempts to seem impressive by moving with a similar speed, but instead fails in crafting even simple scenes without hacking it up like a movie trailer.

Similarly, the soundtrack goes down much of the same road as “Suicide Squad,” using a wide variety of recogniztunes to populate the film and further make it seem appealing to the younger crowd. Much like “Squad,” the music choices end up being abrasively distracting to a degree where they end up messing with the sound mix and drowning out pieces of diegetic sound within the film.

So is there anything within the film that works? Fortunately, the film’s titular character is the film’s saving grace, to some extent. Margot Robbie is loads of fun to watch as Quinn and the movie realizes this. It is truly her movie and out of all the characters featured, she is the most fleshed out and developed. While Robbie’s material to work with is still rather thin, she finds does her very best with it and is a fun ray of energy to experience.

Similarly, Ewan McGregor’s performance as Black Mask, while not fleshed out enough, has fun hamming it up at the end of the day. The opening of the film does something very unexpected with its presentation to tell Quinn’s backstory that was highly entertaining to watch, giving hope that the rest of the film would keep up this refreshingly creative momentum.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen. Despite its few rays of hope, “Birds of Prey” takes a huge step back for this cinematic universe. There were plenty of places to take this idea that could have made for a great experience, but the film drops the ball hard and reverts to trying too hard to impress its audience, losing its own voice in the process. Its safe to say that this is a venture worth flying away from.