Driven by kinetic energy and irreverence more than storyline, Birds of Prey is a pure blast of frivolous fun. With a female writer, Christina Hodson (Bumblebee and Unforgettable), director, Cathy Yan (Dead Pigs) and lead actor, Margot Robbie, the film proves that women can produce as much brazen behaviour as the men.
Never taking itself too seriously, it fires off a lot of bursts of energy and then moves on quickly regardless of their level of impact. In this way, it buries those ineffective moments before they do too much harm to the forward momentum. The wise cracking bad guy has a long and successful history in film and turning that tradition around into a wise cracking bad girl is artfully accomplished.
Robbie is her usual magnetic self and even with the bleached white makeup, her true colours shine through. She is fast becoming a Hollywood institution. There is even a scene mid-film where she gets to pay homage to tinsel town’s all time favourite blonde and it shows how comfortably she has become assimilated into that most exclusive of clubs.
Shot almost entirely on a film set, the comic book feel is never far from the mind and the conversations and monologues are easy to see contained in speech bubbles. Setting the uneven moments aside, it’s clear that these girls just want to have fun and it’s difficult to resist the infectious sense of it all.
Rob Hudson
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