Guardians of the Galaxy – Review

Guardians of the Galaxy – Review

“Guardian of the Galaxy” is silly, messy, loud, long, snarky, corny, snide, cheesy and insanely gitty. And it’s also one of the most fun times I have had watching a summer blockbuster film.

In actuality what sounds like a list of negative criticisms by me, are in fact a list of the films strengths with its high energy fast paced comedic story line of the tale of a band galactic misfits who are circumstantially thrown together to saving the universe from a villain named “Ronan the Destroyer”; but of course you already knew the universe is always in need of perpetual saving in science fiction films.

The story starts out on earth in the late 1980’s with a rather genuinely tender and dramatic scene of a small boy learning one of life’s hardest lessons. And as quickly as you can say “teleport me up”, the film leaps forward somewhere in a Star War-ish galaxy far, far away about 25+ years later where we find the same small boy all grown up into a man named Peter Quill who likes being referred to as “Star Lord”. The grown Peter is a bounty hunter now who has been hired to secure (steal) a mysterious silver looking softball sized orb call the “Orb” that has unique powers going back to the very genesis of the universe itself. Now, plot wise going forward, if an “Orb has unique powers” then there is obviously going to be a crap storm of interstellar maniacal egomaniac bad guys all lining up for the next two hours trying to secure (steal) it for themselves as well. But of course it will be the the rag tag coupling of our “Guardians“ heroes that will be given the chance to save the day for all.

With as a diverse team you will ever see in a movie we find one of the “Guardians” being a limited vocabulary talking “Chewbacca-ish” tree named “Groot”; a green sultry, sexy and fearless woman named “Gamora”; Drax an oversized bald Wrestling looking behemoth who’s skin looked like he got caught in a red slip stick factory assembly line; Rocket a fearless, sardonic, sarcastic, witty, and clever gun totting talking raccoon and of course the leader of the pack the only human in the group with a 1980’s Walkman cassette player and a Michael Jackson “Thriller” styled red jacket named  “Peter” aka “Star Lord”.

With some familiar strokes reminiscent to Star Wars, GOTG works extremely well because it doesn’t tie itself down trying to have everything in the film make specific technical sense. This is, in the purist sense, a simple adventure film which is also a very smart and comedic super hero story as well. And while there were a few scenes in the story that didn’t always have “one plus one” adding up to “two”, ultimately it didn’t matter because the Director to his credit never loses his guiding focus in “it’s about getting the orb stupid”.

There is also a lot of slap stick bantering humor ranging from a character’s lack of understanding of human irony and metaphors who literally took everything said to him literally that had me laughing out loud throughout the film. In addition there was a creative imagining of a supporting character who can only best be described as a blue skinned, orange Mohawk, part mercenary, bounty hunter, bandit, red neck cowboy.

In the end, GOTG is just simply a whole lot of movie going fun because it sparkles with the right amount of hipness, lightheartedness, ebullience, visual action, surprises and sincere goofiness that should leave a warm smile on your face from beginning to end.

Finally, I thoroughly and I mean I thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack to this film. It played songs from the 1970’s and 1980’s that simply took me back that I also knew the words to, adding a surprising subtle but sweet richness to what was already a very entertaining vibrant film.

While I can’t really see paying the extra $10 for GOTG in 3D or IMAX 3D just to see stuff whizzing towards me, by all means see this in the theater, you will have so, so much fun.

3 – 3/4 Stars