If you only see one smart-alecky,
sci-fi, action movie this year, it should be 2013's “Star Trek:
Into Darkness.” Or you could just watch the movie “Serenity”
again, or maybe “The Empire Strikes Back.” “Guardians of the
Galaxy” shoots for the combination of heart, memorable characters,
snappy dialogue, and irreverence that those films have, but it fails
to pull it off.
Expectations were high for this one.
It's the surprise hit of the summer, and most reviews I have seen are
positive. Everyone seems to love Chris Pratt's performance, love the
raccoon, love the tree thing, and think that this rag-tag bunch of
reluctant heroes is the perfect antidote to the typical comic-book
movie. I found the movie to be largely targeted at 13-year-olds,
with lots of cuteness, way to much sentimentality, and so-so acting.
The sentimentality starts right away,
with a young boy (the future Starlord) watching his mom die of cancer
in a very over-wrought scene. Then the kid gets abducted by aliens,
and the movie gets fun for a while. We meet the grown-up Starlord
(Chris Pratt), a handsome rogue of a smuggler who likes to listen to
his mom's old mix-tape on the Sony Walkman she gave him. He picks up
some type of powerful orb from an abandoned planet, and immediately
finds himself the subject of pursuit. The orb is coveted by a
psychopathic terrorist named Ronan, who plans to trade it to a Titan
named Thanos in exchange for destroying a planet. Ronan sends the
green assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) after the orb, but it turns out
she has plans to double-cross the terrorist. Meanwhile, Starlord's
old partner, Yondu (Michael Rooker, playing the exact same Merle
character he plays in “The Walking Dead”) puts out a bounty on
him, which puts him in the sights of bounty-hunters Rocket (a
genetically-modified, talking raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper) and
Groot (a walking, talking tree whose only words are “I am Groot.”)
Later, this motley crew meets Drax the Destroyer, a hunk of muscle
played by professional wrestler Dave Bautista. These guys wind up
teaming up to stop Ronan, of course.
There's no reason this setup couldn't
be plenty of fun, and for 20 minutes or so it is. The misanthropic
raccoon is hilarious, and Starlord shows some Han Solo-esque
potential. Then the movie takes a sappy turn and never looks back.
Where Han Solo was a reluctant hero and lover, Starlord signs on for
both roles with little resistance. (In fairness, I suppose you could
point out that the raccoon is really the Han Solo character, and
Starlord is more like Luke Skywalker, but the plot still sucks.)
Gamora, who was never really impressive as an assassin anyway, spends
the rest of the film whining to her adopted sister to join her and
“not let all those people die.” Even the raccoon turns
sentimental. It seems the screenwriters got too lazy to create a
plot in which the characters would have semi-credible motivations for
teaming up, so they made “friendship” the motivation for guarding
the galaxy.
Ironically, we went to this movie
thinking I would love it, and my wife would just tolerate it. Turns
out that while I was bored, she thought it was delightful. She liked
the soft-hearted Groot and the lost-70's soundtrack, and she didn't
think it was too sentimental at all. She isn't alone. This film is
a massive hit, and my grumpy opinion is definitely in the minority.
But hell, there were people who liked “Return of the Jedi” better
than “The Empire Strikes Back,” too.
2 stars out of 5
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