When I harp about my age, it’s not a cry of disappointment. It’s a badge of pride that I can remember things like the 3 versions of Michael Jackson:

• Little Michael and his brothers, singing about their ‘ABC’s’ and animatedly running horizontally with Shaggy, Velma and Scooby Doo.
• Michael going Off The Wall, being Bad, getting Vincent Price for a Thriller and Eddie Murphy to Remember The Time.
• Michael wearing a scarf around his head and parents dropping off their children at Neverland with a grown man they can’t know personally.

The generation that follows will only know two, morphing one of those versions into another and missing the evolution and eventual regression of the man who once was a cartoon. The cartoon Batman: The Animated Series was my true introduction to comics. I was well into my adolescent life when the series premiered and opened the occasional colored book, but wasn’t invested.

Four years earlier, We invested in Michael Keaton, wearing black shirts with the Batman logo. But by 1992 when Kevin Conroy voices the Dark Knight on my small screen, I was 15 and knew everything. While I didn’t read the comics, I watched every afternoon after school or on Saturday mornings and that was enough to know I knew all. So it was a slight shock when I learned that Harley Quinn, the love interest and sidekick for Mark Hamill’s Joker, was a creation for the cartoon.

The voice was originally done by Arleen Sorkin, who was better known at the time as a character on Days Of Our Lives, one of the few remaining daytime soap operas. A nasally child-like accent that feels from the 1950s, when the arrival of the annual invasion of carnies and their rigged games of chance was anticipated. I enjoyed Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Dr. Harleen Quinzel in 2016’s Suicide Squad mostly because she correctly recreated the voice.

In Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), Robbie doesn’t recreate the character; she is the cartoon in real life. That means the insane acrobatics and action moves that were easily animated and expected as such are similar on the big screen. My judgement is slightly tempered by former Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday and her off-hand comments about how the stunt choreography in John Wick 3 is a flame compared to the candle that is Birds.

Quinn’s fight moves are complicated and I saw a few simple takedowns that could only achieve the same results if that was her signature WWE finishing move. Think Jeff Hardy’s Twist of Fate or The Rock, pausing before delivering The People’s Elbow.

Like the millions…(And Millions!) of The Rock’s fans, I was highly entertained by his antics and the same can be said of Birds. The entertainment value is steeped in Robbie’s performance as the camera stays focused on her for the bulk of the film.

Whether she’s voicing the animated intro, introducing other characters or flipping and kicking another nameless hooligan, Robbie’s only competition for screen time is Ewan McGregor as the antagonist Roman Sionis/Black Mask and honestly, his best work is only when he turns his Big Bad into a neat freak and is treated like a child.

Children, especially those already invested in comic book films, will flock to see this, despite its ‘R’ rating for strong violence and language. But what’s on the screen isn’t any worse than what can be seen in a True Crime documentary on the streaming service of your choice.

What they won’t get is Robbie, successfully strapping a 100-minute film on her shoulders and setting a course for a sequel. She’s helped by the beautiful voice of Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Black Canary and a 13-year old pick-pocket played by Ella Jay Basco.

The script is the biggest drawback, mostly because there’s not enough time to introduce all the characters well enough, so you get flashes of back-story for Huntress, a stone-cold assassin that Mary Elizabeth Winstead can only play to comic relief with an ongoing joke about her name.

The name Rosie Perez brings me back to doing the right thing and pausing my VHS tape for a shot of side boob in White Men Can’t Jump. She was the choreographer for the Fly Girls on In Living Color, giving Jennifer Lopez a national TV spotlight between sketches. She’s serviceable as Renee Montoya, but if replaced by someone else, she wouldn’t be missed through no fault of her own.

No, despite the pluralization of Birds and screen shots of five fabulous females fighting ruffians; this film is the standard by which Harley Quinn will become the centerpiece to the DC cinematic universe. The character is already set to reappear in the upcoming Suicide Squad reboot that no one is asking for, but more importantly, she’s connected to one of the Big 3.

The opening credits feature an animated Superman, then Batman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman and you realize that DC truly has all the great superheroes. You realize that Marvel’s collection starts with Spider-Man and Captain America and after that takes a significant drop. Granted, I’m old and grew up in a time when Tony Stark was more identifiable with Ghostface Killah than Robert Downey.

There was a time when one wouldn’t imagine an action film with a female heroine. Now I see Blake Lively in a movie poster for The Rhythm Section and look forward to Wonder Woman 1984, marveling that the action seems more realistic than John Cena and Vin Diesel fighting atop trailers and driving cars into empty air in the latest Fast and Furious.

What a time to be alive.