fun with delicious characters, lots of fighting and stuff on fire

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2016)

I loved Harley. She steals every scene she's in. Reviews I've read that said the Joker sucked were wrong, he didn't suck, he just got outshone by Harley. We're used to seeing a Joker who owns every inch of celluloid real estate he comes close to, and that wasn't this guy. In this movie it's Harley in the spotlight.
Also I think reviews that said the Joker / Harley relationship was too nice were wrong. There's a scene near the beginning of the movie where she's still Dr. Harleen Quinzel and Joker says he's going to hurt her a lot and then he zaps her brain with electricity and the next thing it cuts to her being Harley and totally insane. It's pretty clear he drove her nuts by hurting her; I don't think it was "too nice" or "not abusive enough to be true to the comics" at all. I mean, how graphic do we really want to see that in a movie with live actors? This was plenty to get the point across.
Besides Harley, the two other characters with good character development and an arc are Deadshot and El Diablo. Deadshot, Will Smith's character, is clearly the star. El Diablo is almost a nonentity right up until the bar scene, but then he's great. Since the beginning of the movie had a lot of characters' backstories I get why they held off on this guy's backstory until later. The final strong character is Waller, arguably the real villain, as several other reviews have said. On that point I agree with most of the reviews I've read.
Plot? What plot? Just toss the characters on the screen and let them kick ass. It's fun. I think this was the best DC movie so far. They just let the action be action and the characters be themselves and it worked. Yeah, I could wonder why a character like Boomerang who doesn't have any powers is trying to fight alongside mutants, and against mutants, er oh excuse me "metahumans" like whatever DC. Anyway, never mind the why, that's not what this is about. Waller just opened her crayon box of cray and scribbled all over the city, never mind why anyone would think Harley belongs fighting alongside the crocodile from the sewers and fireball guy. Oh, and that fireball stuff: yeah I like. Destroy, destroy, destroy! Burn baby burn! Mwahahahaha! And if it's still twitching Harley can smash it with a baseball bat.
The action is fun, even if we have kind of already seen most of those effects before. The creepy bubble head things were different, though. Don't bring along your squeamish friend, but do see it if you like fighting and things being burned down and cool villains.