I liked the interactions between IE and JC, but felt that the movie pays too much attention to MR's HQ in a "GM's girlfriend" sort of way after watching interviews.
I thought Idris Elba was a huge upgrade from Will Smith, and his HR Giger helmet was pretty cool. His ability to unfold a packet of gum into an antitank rifle a la Iron Man 2 was cool looking but preposterous, but at least it was his own thing.
Margot Robbie has still got it, but I tend to agree with your about the "GM's girlfriend" feel. Yes, she should succeed wildly a lot of the time, but she should also fail wildly a lot of the time, and it would be every bit as entertaining. She's the wild card, not the ace.
I loved The Suicide Squad. Classic James Gunn.
The Harley Quinn solo stuff did feel a lot like a private session between GM and GM's Girlfriend - I could just imagine the look on the poor neckbeard's face when she (post-coitus) promptly blows away his poor GM's-Expy character.
It's certainly not explicitly anti-woke, and Gunn's politics are clearly Left-Liberal, but he equally clearly hates Deep State Democrats just as much as he hates Gun-Ho Republicans, so I was ok with that. And he's a fan of dank memes, I kept seeing weird stuff and thinking "Wait, is that a reference to ...surely not?!"
The actual plot is a mix of Action Movie themes, notably
The Expendables - only done much much much better* - with a bit of
Where Eagles Dare. I thought it worked fine for a black comedy, where plausibility takes a back seat to snappy one-liners and groteseque situations.
*As a world-builder nerd I pay attention to stuff like the population figures of the crappy Latin dictatorships and how well they could support the military resources shown, the hordes of fanatical mooks, their hardware etc.
The Suicide Squad gave the banana republic's capital city a population in the 'millions'; in
The Expendables AIR it was said to be 6,000!