So this movie is doing that winky, hyper-clever, non-chronological kind of thing, right. It’s very clearly sending all the “this isn’t a stodgy, serious movie, it’s fun and witty and cool!” signals. The thing is, that’s really hard to do well, and this only does it okay.

The characters mostly feel kinda rote. The kid they got to play Cassandra Cain is clearly supposed to be giving some Awkwafina-in-Ocean’s-8 attitude, but she just feels flat and tbh like too much of an innocent kid too much of the time. Margot Robbie does a credible job as Harley Quinn, but she’s very much working in a well-established manic-hot-mess-with-a-heart-of-gold-sort-of mode, and the character never surprises. Rosie Perez is doing an extremely by-the-numbers (enough so that it gets lampshaded in dialogue repeatedly) ’80s action movie loose cannon cop. Ewan McGregor and Chris Messina do boring zero-note villains, who have so little going for them that I’m actually surprised they’re in the comics, and unsurprised that I haven’t heard of them until now.

The exceptions here are Jurnee Smollett, who makes Black Canary interesting with more apparent interiority than any other character in the movie, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays a socially awkward assassin that’s easily the best character in the movie by a mile.

The plot similarly feels rote, the kind of thing where if someone gave you two sentences, you could describe the entire plot of the movie because it almost has to go the way it goes, and you’ve seen every element in it a hundred times before. Like, someone swallows a diamond and then everyone’s after them and they make jokes about pooping, that’s how cliche we’re talking.

Visually, the movie really wants to have a fun, bright, chaotic style, and… I guess this is the part where it comes closest to succeeding? The fight scenes in particular are really well-choreographed, unique, easy to understand, and fun. If you’re in this movie for the action bits, you’re going to probably really like it.

Anyway, this is all a lot of negative stuff, but on the whole the movie isn’t bad; it’s probably even to the positive side of mediocre. I think it’s either the second or third best DC movie (I haven’t seen Aquaman, which is the question mark, based on what I’ve heard) — but really, it’s not a DC movie that I think of as I think about this one, it’s Ant-Man, which similarly had a not-entirely-successful comedic action bent, similarly wasn’t as witty as it clearly wanted to be, but which also had some really good parts amidst what was mostly an okayish movie.

I can’t say I’d recommend this one, exactly, but if you’re looking for this kind of thing, it’ll deliver satisfyingly.