Appeals to a certain demographic but is a JOY for those people in question

Rating: 7/10 (13 August 2016)

Do I think this saves DCEU after the disaster known as BvS? No. Will I be sad if Warner Bros decides to reboot DCEU due to poor reviews and box office results? Heck no. But I am glad this movie is made, for properly depicting the members of Suicide Squad and being what it is: A comic book movie for people who like and/or are interested in the characters it depicts. This movie is a solid 7/10 for me and I acknowledge that this score will change for someone else with different expectations from movies as a whole.
I am in love with this movie. I am in full acknowledgment that this movie was purely made as a knee-jerk reaction and as a shameless rebellious mindset with little base to support itself, and it should be obvious to anyone that this movie has a myriad of flaws. I am not ashamed of excusing these flaws to enjoy a proper depiction of really, REALLY underrated comic book characters like Deadshot, Katana and El Diablo. This movie makes me care about characters I don't think I would ever care about, and that's a definitive plus if you ask me.
I don't know what the critics were expecting from this movie but I have somewhat of a theory. I did also like Warcraft: The Beginning (despite me having absolutely no knowledge on Warcraft lore) when it was absolutely destroyed by the critics. Warcraft and Squad both have supernatural elements in their story lines that were not properly explained in their origins and they expect you to believe these elements just happen to exist. I think MCU and The Dark Knight trilogy spoiled everybody in that regard: They try to ground their superheroes in a believable setting that could exist within our own reality. This is a movie where we are expected to believe ancient artifacts can encase supernatural beings, a human being can born with pyrokinesis, and a katana sword can entrap souls of its victims.
The story was simplistic alright, but it works on the story's benefit. You don't need to know much about the story other than these are bad people with criminal record and due to their unique specialties they were chosen to assume roles in a governmental response team to possible supernatural attacks. This is a lovely premise and I cannot think of a better team to embody this idea. Sure, half of the team is vastly over-powered compared to the rest like, say, Captain Boomerang, it becomes downright comical: but movie downright acknowledges it and SUBTLY addresses to it when other characters find it socially awkward to point that out.
The main squad members were on point. Killer Croc sadly pales in comparison, but efforts were made to involve him in the story. Slipknot does not live for long, but he serves his purpose. Margot Robbie is wonderful and her depiction of Harley Quinn brings more than just a sex toy for the Joker: She shows duality, she shows ingenuity. This Harley is a character worthy of her lore. Characters like Will Smith's Deadshot, El Diablo and Katana, certainly surpass their lores and bring intense amounts of humanity to their characters. The rest aren't as well developed but they share a comic relief spot altogether and it definitely works. Viola Davis' Amanda Waller and Joel Kinnaman's Rick Flag also bring more to the table than expected. The villains are okay, the depiction of Enchantress and his brother Incubus was lovely, although the latter was fragged a bit easily IMHO. They were depicted as vastly powerful beings but Incubus was taken out a bit easily comparatively.
And to be honest, this leads to another theory of mine: This movie reminds me of a perfectly good session of a game of FRP, like Dungeons and Dragons but ofc in a modern superhero setting. I love when movies do that. We start with established characters telling their backstories, banding together with their own specialties to bear through minion encounters with memorable details, and then they take down the big bad for some loot. Just like that, not always every character's dice rolls like it should, and sometimes a poorly thought move deals devastating blow as if their character rolled a 20.
Jared Leto's Joker is completely underwhelming. He is miscast and his method acting is nil. Due to the fact that he's extremely cut from the movie benefits the movie tenfold. He serves some bit of purpose in the story to elevate Harley's character and then he storms off (kinda). I don't think his persisting presence would in any way help the movie from that point onwards. And I don't really care Despite how this movie's advertised, this is not a Joker movie, this movie has more to do with Harley than him, and Harley was done so well I don't care about Joker. I believe they designed him to be a modernized version of Jack Nicholson's Joker, and I absolutely despise Jack's Joker (and Tim Burton's vision of the Batman lore as a whole) and I believe everyone who show a baseless respect to Jack Nicholson's Joker while simultaneously hating on Jared Leto's Joker to be completely contradictive, if not selective and biased. The only difference between Nicholson and Leto except the gangsta motifs of their characters is that Nicholson is naturally charismatic when Leto is a black hole of charisma. While charisma is a big part of Joker's character, Tim Burton's Batman ruins Joker's character in so many other ways it doesn't matter anyway. Everyone got their best Joker out of The Dark Knight. Move on.
I like this movie a lot and I think this was a movie made for people like me and it's a hard thing to find when comic book movies are so marginalized and marketed towards a wide audience. I am glad and will definitely take this movie as a perfectly beautiful standalone movie when DCEU is discontinued.