Suicide Squad slammed by critics: 'Not fun bad... just bad'
Ugly. Boring. Toxic. Predictable. Unexciting. Overstaffed. Overstuffed. In the history of cinema criticism those words, and others, have been levelled at the worst movies to darken the silver screen. But rarely have all - and more - been thrown at the one film.
With just days before the Warner Bros superhero film
Suicide Squad begins to launch globally, the studio-imposed embargo on reviews has been lifted and the first of those have begun to surface. The verdict? To quote
Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson, whose reviewseemed to sum up both the film and the prevailing reaction to it: "Bad. Not fun bad. Not redeemable bad. Just bad.
The Hollywood Reporter, which is one of LA's two influential trade newspapers, said the film recalled too many "dour" films in the science fiction and fantasy genres.
"
Suicide Squad may not quite commit harakiri, but it certainly feels like it's taken far too many sleeping pills," veteran film critic Todd McCarthy wrote.
Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad.
The other, Variety, laid the blame at an earlier Warner Bros superhero stumble, Zack Snyder's
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Variety's Peter DeBruge said
Suicide Squad's director David Ayer was "beholden to the corporate vision of other recent DC adaptations, most notably Zack Snyder's sleek-surfaced and oppressively self-serious riffs on the Superman legend." That film was widely criticised by fans and also slammed by film critics. Though it went on to gross more than three quarters of a billion dollars at the box office, the damaging word of mouth kept it below the one-billion-dollar watermark.
Jared Leto as the Joker in Suicide Squad. Photo: Clay Enos
Off a US$250 million budget and a marketing budget of almost equal that, expectations sat very high with Snyder's reboot of the DC universe, which Warner Bros is depending onto challenge rival Marvel's dominance at the box office. Its failure to crack the one-billion-dollar watermark was particularly bruising.
Suicide Squad is one of a number of film projects that share a DC Comics universe, including the upcoming Justice League and Wonder Woman films. DeBruge noted that Ayer was essentially required to "conform" to the style which Snyder has established for the linked DC Comics films.
Robbie with Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Karen f**kuhara, Joel Kinnaman, Will Smith and Jai Courtney.
Other reviews were equally scathing.
The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips described the film as a "garish, overstaffed, overstuffed, blithely sadistic corporate directive disguised as a PG-13 summer movie for all ages."
Phillips took aim at its "lousy script" and lack of "satisfying storytelling".
"The flashbacks roll in and out, explaining either too much or too little, and the action may be violent but it's not interesting," he wrote.
The influential pop culture website
io9 described it as a "B-movie".
But by far the most damaging review came from
Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson.
"Suicide Squad is bad," Lawson declared. "Not fun bad. Not redeemable bad. Not the kind of bad that is the unfortunate result of artists honourably striving for something ambitious and falling short.
Suicide Squad is just bad."
Lawson described film as ugly, boring and toxic.
It is, Lawson said, "simply a dull chore steeped in flaccid machismo, a shapeless, poorly edited trudge that adds some mildly appalling sexism and even a soupçon of racism to its abundant, hideously timed gun worship."
Worst of all, he added, it is too "shoddy and forgettable to even register as revolting. At least revolting would have been something."
Film writer David Ehrlich, in a review published by Indiewire, says the film actually makes good on the promise made in the marketing: "Worst. Heroes. Ever."
That line refers to the fact that
Suicide Squadis, unusually, a film where the superheroes are drawn from the DC Comics canon of "bad guys", notably The Joker, Harley Quinn, Boomerang and Killer Croc.
Ehrlich called the film "mind-bogglingly stupid".
Not all of the reviews published so far are bad, though it's fair to say that positive commentary about the film is too thin on the ground to reverse the damage caused by the avalanche of bad reviews.
USA Today's Brian Truitt called it an "excellently quirky, proudly raised middle finger to the staid superhero-movie establishment."
And
Kristy Puchko, writing for Comic Book Resources, said it was "ferocious fun, boasting a bounty of action, mirthful mayhem, and a cavalcade of curious characters."
Suicide Squad stars Will Smith, Jared Leto, Viola Davis and two Australian actors, Margot Robbie and Jai Courtney.
The reboot of the DC cinema franchises - essentially, the Batman and Superman characters, and now an expanded Justice League series - are central to Warner Bros studio's strategy to unseat its rival Marvel.
Marvel, which is owned by Disney, produces films featuring The Avengers and its members Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Captain America, and has, for the last decade at least, dominated the superhero box office market.
The DC universe, which is owned by Warner Bros, owns the older movie franchises featuring Superman and Batman, and is now launching a Justice League film series and standalone titles for popular heroes such as Wonder Woman and Aquaman.
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment...ics-not-fun-bad-just-bad-20160802-gqjmpd.html
