GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 - Review

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2

Coming off the highly successful debut 2014 film “GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY”, we again find Peter Quill aka “Star Lord” intergalactic bounty hunter leading his unusual assortment of team members thrust into danger with the mission of saving the galaxy.

In this 2017 sequel “GOTGV2” we find the “Guardians” (as they call themselves) traversing the outer reaches of the cosmos after being hired by a powerful alien race called the Sovereign to protect their precious “energy batteries” from invaders. When it is discovered that Rocket has stolen these items they were sent to guard, the Sovereign dispatch their armada to search for vengeance. But as the Guardians try to escape, the mystery of Peter's parentage is revealed causing a whole new circumstances for them to be concerned about while fighting off their pursuers.

In the original 2014 film “GOTG” it had a concept that was smart, fresh, tongue and cheek silly, irreverent, sexy, filled with timely humor, good music and a big heart, all the while encasing all of these attributes into a solid plot for these rag tag adventurers to protecting an object called “orb” that would end up saving the universe. The technical strength of that 2014 film was it never strayed too far from its principle lead character “Star Lord” while at the same time balanced out the rest of the story with timely supporting performances from “Root”, “Rocket”, “Yondu”, Drax and “Gamora”. The result was a fun filled refreshing new take on the science fiction space adventure genre.

In this 2017 sequel effort Director Peter Gunn directs “GOTGV2” with the same characters and the same refreshing and imaginative look, but he totally ignores the need to keep one foot of the film rooted in some timely comedic interplay between all of the “Guardian” principles. This result this time out is a film that was not only narratively confusing with its sloppy storytelling, it also felt for all of its 2:18 running time to be perpetually hollow, obnoxiously loud, routine in its execution and just plain depressing to watch. Somehow Director Gunn, who directed the first film, managed to double down on the “smart dumb stuff" from the original effort and made this film just dumb. At the same time he completely strips all of its crafty comedic timing for a dramatic bloated exotic mess of a story between the principles that never made any real sense and never was very clever.

“GOTGV2” still does offers a few good moments of crazy laugh out loud humor, but not enough of it to keep the film focused into having some meaningful purpose or direction.

If you go to see this film thinking you will get the same good feeling you got from the 2014 film, something tells me you will be terribly disappointed. It seems Director Gunn forgot he made a funny film back in 2014 and instead tried to make an overly dramatic serious film this time out with very few gags along the way. Ultimately “GOTGV2” works way too hard to please all of our “senses” with too many boring characters and too many boring scenes.

Venture into the deep intergalactic cosmos of your local movie theater to see this sequel effort if you really want to, but you do so at your own $12.50 ticket price peril. I suggest waiting to see it when it is playing in your local “Red Box Galaxy” dispenser.

2.50 Stars