Suicide Squad Reviews: 10 Things We Learned About The Joker
5. His Relationship With Harley Is Dangerous
You could have predicted that there'd be some controversy about the Joker's relationship with Harley Quinn. She's essentially a deranged product of abuse (mental and physical), and she is the ultimate Stockholm Syndrome case.
AVClub have the best run-down of their dynamic:
"The two of them wiggle and paw like homicidal horny teenage lovers who seem to have broken out of Arkham Asylum and straight into Spring Breakers, plunging into a chemical bath as though it were the ultimate gesture of goth-industrial romance."
It doesn't sound like the NY Times were all that smitten:
"Harley Quinn, meanwhile, in a tiny T-shirt and tinier shorts, her multicolored hair in ponytails, is a frat boy’s idea of what a feminist action heroine might look like. Her relationship with the Joker — she calls him her Puddin’, and is basically his brainwashed plaything — is a sour sexual nightmare played as a smirky, naughty joke. Harley is the object of a tired, lowest-common-denominator male fantasy, much as Ms. Robbie herself was in a recent Vanity Fair profile."
Other reviews have openly expressed that the film isn't for the easily triggered, and it seems the source is universally their relationship and the portrayal of Harley.
Actually, though, not everyone agrees, as NYDailyNews have a different spin on the relationship:
"He does a decent job in the few scenes he has, because one thing we've never seen on the big screen is the Joker's relationship with his psychotic former psychiatrist Harley Quinn. Their romance gives "Suicide Squad" a bit more warmth than some might expect."