Suicide Squad Life Lessons: Harley Quinn
Harley Quinn is one bad ass bitch that you definitely don’t want to be messing with. She’s a beautiful lunatic who’s also, if you squint past the mallet, a surprisingly useful life coach. The film is a mess. Harley is not confused about that. She is the only person in it who seems pleased to be there.
Lesson one is pick your own name. Dr Harleen Quinzel walked into Arkham as the sensible one and walked out as Harley, and Margot Robbie plays that reinvention like a dare. You do not have to burn your life down to steal the idea. You do have to stop introducing yourself as someone else’s plus-one.
Lesson two is the outfit is armour. The shirt is ridiculous, and that is the point. Harley treats every room like a club night that got out of hand. Confidence, even the unhinged kind, reads louder than a sensible coat and a plan you do not believe in.
Lesson three is loyalty has a limit. The Squad plot keeps circling the same bad-boyfriend problem the comics have been arguing about since Batman: The Animated Series. If the person you are devoted to keeps putting you in the blast radius, that is not a love story. That is a level you are replaying on purpose.
Lesson four is you can be the loudest person in the room and still be the one holding the group together. The film works when Harley is bouncing off Deadshot, not when it stops to explain a witch. Be the spark. Just do not let the spark own the lease.
Take the mallet if you want. Leave the part where you shrink for somebody who likes you small. That is the only life lesson in this movie worth writing on a notebook, and Harley already wrote it in lipstick.