Suicide Squad 'Gives Villainy a Bad Name'

'It's terrible,' says one critic
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 5, 2016 8:35 AM CDT

Audiences seem to like Suicide Squad, but critics most certainly do not. One of the most hyped films of the year has just a 27% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to a 74% rating from viewers. Here's what critics are saying:

  • Consider this "the latest letdown for DC Comics fans who've been waiting for someone to pick up the baton Christopher Nolan left behind and do this universe justice," Rene Rodriguez writes at the Miami Herald. There's not a "moment of spontaneous fun or humor," and the script is "a giant pile of nonsense." Rodriguez is no fan of Jared Leto's "cartoonish" Joker, while Will Smith is simply "coasting" as assassin Deadshot.
  • The flick actually "gives villainy a bad name," writes Adam Graham at the Detroit News. Among the disappointments: "A consistent tone is never established, the action is choppy, and the climax reaches Green Lantern levels of embarrassment," he writes. But the biggest sin is "that in a movie about villains they couldn't get an interesting villain for the Squad to fight against."

  • Andrew O'Hehir at Salon offers a silver lining: "Sure, it's terrible. But it's not even close to the worst movie of the summer or the year" and "the terrible reviews will have little impact on its opening weekend," he writes. That said, "the only thing remotely surprising about this movie is how profoundly second-rate it turned out to be at every level of conception and execution."
  • Brian Truitt, however, liked it. "Suicide Squad is an excellently quirky, proudly raised middle finger to the staid superhero-movie establishment" with "shades of Guardians of the Galaxy and the original Ghostbusters," he writes at USA Today. Smith finds his "best role in years" and Margot Robbie has her "star-making turn" as Harley Quinn. And though Leto's Joker can't compare to Heath Ledger's version, "it definitely works."
(Here's another reviewer who thinks "Suicide Squad kinda sucks.")

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