Why Do They Keep Dropping The Ball?

Rating: 5/10 (19 November 2016)

So look, it's not as bad as BvS. For two reasons:
a) No pointless pseudo-philosophical claptrap about gods and mortals that doesn't actually mean anything
b) No Jesse Eisenberg doing his Joker-Without-Makeup bit
And there are good things in this film. There are good actors in it. There are no awful actors (hi Jesse!) in it. The idea is unusual and interesting. There's quite a lot of action.
But yet... it falls short of expectations. It's frustrating. Just when you want it to fly, it flounders. The key issue is that I really didn't care about anyone but Deadshot. Harley is fun, but her romance with Mr. J is under-written and unconvincing. So she really only comes across as nutty and wanton which is hard to care about.
To put this in perspective, I cared a lot more and actually liked Harley in the animated series. It's not Margot Robbie's fault. She's actually terrific and almost pulls it off. But to get her over the line she needed a more fleshed out relationship with the Joker. And a better Joker.
I'm not sure Jared Leto or the people who wrote this movie got the Joker - or why Harley needs him. In this movie, he never comes across as anything but a sadistic psycho - which he is - but in other incarnations he also has a brilliantly manipulative and devious side - appearing vulnerable or in need of help to suck in his victims just before he slips in the knife. It's not hard - we've seen it in previous versions of this character. But not here. Harley just loves him because she does. End of. Keep up. It's not very satisfying.
The plot is pretty flimsy, but I can get over that. Marvel have done flimsier but get away with it because they seem to understand how to make audiences care about characters.
I'm not saying DC are incapable of this. I really hope they up their game and learn a few lessons from Feige. But based on the three DCEU movies thus far, they'd better start studying his playbook hard. I know "Suicide Squad" and "BvS" made a lot of money but so do "Transformers" movies and "Suicide Squad" is closer in spirit to those sorts of films than Marvel right now.