MAY 9, 2017
Groot is back.
The summer movie season officially kicked off over the weekend with the much-anticipated sequel to the surprise 2014 hit, “Guardians of the Galaxy.” That mongrel Marvel release, which featured superheroes with whom most moviegoers were not familiar and a less-than-stellar cast (if you don’t count that doughy sidekick from “Parks and Recreation”), stunned the film business with how warmly that audiences around the world embraced this oddball collection of characters.
I’ll admit that I went into that first film as a skeptic. Faithful readers of this column know that I’m not the biggest of fans of comic-book movies, mostly because of the rigidity of the storytelling. Act 1 of these movies usually begins with an action scene followed by character introduction with (hopefully) a little humor thrown in, Act 2 is where the plot kicks in, and Act 3 is the (always overlong) final battle scene. Once in a while, there’s some variation thrown in, but that’s the formula, and it’s one that seems to work with audiences.
When I sat down to watch the first “Guardians,” I expected the film to begin with the usual opening action scene. Instead I got a goofy looking guy in a long leather coat, walking through a cavernous dark forest who puts on his headphones, pulls out his 1980s Walkman and begins to sing and dance to Redbone’s 1974 hit “Come and Get Your Love.” I was smitten, and “Guardians of the Galaxy” remains the only comic-book film that I really love.
So I was nervous when I entered the theater for “Vol. 2.” I didn’t want my friends tampered with, as so many sequels seem to do to their characters. Having now seen the film, the question remains, “Is the sequel as good as the first one?”
Well, yes and no.
The gang is all back — Peter Quill aka Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), a half-human, half-Celestial who was taken from Earth as a child and raised by a group of criminals called The Ravagers; Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who, along with her angry sister Nebula (Karen Gillan), were raised by their tyrannical father Thanos to be assassins; Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), a musclebound brute who nevertheless has the loudest laugh in the universe; Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a genetically modified raccoon mercenary with a voice that comes from the streets of Brooklyn with an attitude to match, and Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) who was introduced as a mere sapling at the end of the first film but who is a character whom the Guardians have now vowed to protect. And, of course, there’s the tunes.
No surprise that the two best scenes in “Vol. 2” are music based. In the film’s opening credits, the Guardians are threatened by a big gooey tentacled monster, and as they rush into battle and are quickly thrashed, director James Gunn keeps all the action in the distant background to focus on what’s really important — Baby Groot’s version of ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky,” which nuttily dominates the foreground. Similarly, a prison break by Rocket and blue-skinned overthrown Ravenger leader Yondu (Michael Rooker, who’s the heart and soul of the film) is set to Jay and the Americans’ “Come a Little Bit Closer” for no earthly reason, but it works smashingly.
As for the plot, yes, there’s a storyline about stolen batteries and the havoc that wreaks, but what “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is really about is family, with particular emphasis on daddy issues. Peter, at long last, has an opportunity to meet his long-lost father Ego (an excellent Kurt Russell) who has built a planet in his own image; Gamora and Nebula whose hatred of their father has only driven them farther apart; Drax, who still mourns the loss of his wife and children at the hands of Thanos, and Rocket who still resents those who turned him into a genetically modified thing. Troubled as their individual families are, the Guardians do bond together to create a new one to protect Baby Groot.
Where “Vol. 2” falls down is in the story that they have chosen to tell, particularly in Act 2, where Peter spends almost all of his time walking around his father’s planet listening to Ego tell his son all about his heritage and how they can take on the universe together. OK, it gets a lot of exposition out, but we don’t want to see Star-Lord listening for 20 minutes. The virtual absence of Pratt, who usually brings so much action and humor to the movie, drags on the film. Rocket and Yondu do their best as characters to fill in, but all that walking and listening do impair the forward momentum of the story. And Act 3 is the usual CGI battle bore, although having the human presence in these battles help to make them a bit more relatable than other Marvel finales.
Still, there’s so much of the spirit of the original “Guardians” that shows up here that, despite the mid-movie sag, you can’t help but leave the theater with a smile on your face and perhaps even a tear. (You’ll get no spoilers from me.) At the very least, “Vol. 2” gets the summer movie season off to a promising start with a spirit that I hope that 3 or 5 or 10 films can match. Let’s wait and see.
GRADE: B
