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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: I Am Groot (Movie Review)

The first Guardians of the Galaxy holds a special place in our hearts within our household.  It’s how we found our son.  His name is Star-Lord.  Wait!  Let me back up and catch you up to speed here.  It was my 40th birthday, August 31, 2014.  Like usual here in Austin, TX we could not find anything to do.  Our friend Serena was in town visiting too.  She had never been to an Alamo Drafthouse before and likes to drink so we took her there.  I think she was apprehensive at first not really wanting to see Guardians, but I digress as that’s not important.  My fiancée and I had already seen it twice and we loved it.  Nevertheless Serena ended up liking it too.  However, the crux of my story revolves around us walking out of the screening and into the theater lobby.  I spotted what I thought to be the cutest little puppy I ever seen and muttered my famous words “hey Kori look at the puppy.”  That was it.  We ended up talking to an Asian woman who held the little guy.  She said she found him crying, left for dead in the dumpster behind the nearby grocery store.  His rear leg was wounded and his whiskers were all tinged off, burnt obviously.  She was trying to find a good home for him.  And that’s ladies and gentlemen how we ended up with my son, our little Star-Lord.

Needless to say Guardians of the Galaxy was a huge whopping success for Marvel/Disney.  Quite honestly out of the fourteen it’s my favorite Marvel superhero movie to date and I knew nothing about it prior to diving in.  How’s that for being pleasantly surprised?  So this sequel were gathered here to talk about today was already green lit before the first one even came out.  Coincidentally the same can be said for the third film in the series, which is said to also again be under the love and care of writer/director James Gunn.  I couldn’t be happier about this news!  Now let’s cover the 411 formalities of a good movie review and then we’ll chat about what all goes down and how amazeballs it can be for you despite how the mass critics are trying to say it’s not as good as the first one.

It should come as no surprise Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is based on the Marvel Comics superhero team Guardians of the Galaxy.  No duh!  It is obviously the sequel to 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the fifteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.   That’s a whole lot of films, huh?  It’s written and directed by James Gunn and stars an ensemble cast featuring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Elizabeth Debicki, Chris Sullivan, Sean Gunn, Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell.   Sadly the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 trailers kind of spoil things as we travel with our motley gang of Guardians throughout the cosmos as they help Peter Quill (Pratt’s character lovingly known as Star-Lord)  learn more about his true parentage.  In other words, who’s his daddy?!  Rest assured that really gets answered in the film too.

I would say there’s not too much time set between the first film and this one.  Groot is still a baby so I would guesstimate a year tops or maybe a little more?  I don’t know, but that’s not our concern.  Our concern is the story.  It’s an odd one.  What I mean by that is it’s not your typical sequel where they try to outdo everything that made the first one spectacular.  I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of glad about that.  However, the story was very “alien” to me in the way the antagonist is kind of unorthodox screenplay-wise.  Whatever!  I’m sure I’ll warm up to it more with a second viewing this weekend.  What won me over was A) we’re with our family again and B) the non-stop laugh riot that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is.  I was in stitches throughout.  Despite the slow pacing of it all this is so far the funniest film of the year for me.  Drax (Bautista), Rocket  (Cooper) and of course baby Groot (Vin Diesel) stole the show with their antics and one-liners.  It’s also very adult in nature too with references to sexual jokes, positions and appendages.  If you’re a D.I.N.K. like me, you have to love that!

After one of the most incredible cinematic and fun opening sequences I have ever seen in a motion picture we spend the bulk of our time on a planet called Ego (Russell).  Yep that’s right I just referred to a person as a planet.  Ego may seem like a nice guy err I mean planet on the surface, but boy is there something off with the guy.  Meanwhile Yondu (Rooker), his mohawk and his crew are up to no good as well.  They are out to get the Guardians once and for all.  Now I also can’t forget the other side story of Gamora’s (Saldaña) sister Nebula (Gillan) either.  She’s also up to her usual mischievous ways causing chaos and destruction with pretty much every onscreen action she pursues.  However, what it all boils down to here is a sense of family.  That’s the central theme throughout as not only do we learn all about Star-Lord’s ancestry, but also of Gamora and Nebula’s bitter rivalry as well as the family that Drax tragically lost.

All in all I had a blast with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, but truth be told it does have quirky pacing issues in my opinion.  Don’t go into this one sleepy.  It felt strangely off at times and nowhere near as satisfying as the first film, but hey that’s just me.  I need to have a second impression made.  You know what that means?  I’ll be going back this weekend.  My expectations for what I was expecting may not have been what reality delivered, but I do know this.  It was a non-stop laugh riot and in our world of scares and stress laughter is the very best medicine.  That’s all I care about and so should you.  The pros outweigh the cons here and that’s all that matters.  After all it’s hard to beat the mythical masterpiece that is the first film.  But get this.  There’s not one, not even two, but four during the credits scenes as well as one after they end.  So there’s five whopping reasons why you want to stay seated and respectful to others once those credits start to roll.  Your results may vary, but the one thing I bet you can’t dispute is the laughs you’ll have with this one.  That baby Groot is so damn adorable.  And here’s my man card.  Enjoy!  This one gets a 4-score for its FUN-fatcor!

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