SERIOUSLY GOOFY
Guardians are back ... and fun as ever
You never forget your first Groot.
When Guardians of the Galaxy opened in the summer of 2014, it was a breath of fresh air in an increasingly crowded (and increasingly self-important) comic-book-inspired universe. Peter (Star-Lord) Quill, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora and the rest of the gang helped catapult the film to a $333-million take, and were just plain fun to watch doing it. And then there was Groot.
The giant treeoid is now a mere sapling in the sequel, which picks up shortly after the events of the first film. But the character that really comes into his own this time is Dave Bautista as Drax, the hulking green-and-red mercenary.
Here is a man who laughs in the face of death. Though to be fair he’d probably also laugh in the face of a clock, the west face of the Eiger or the open face of a sandwich. He finds just about everything funny, which is itself pretty funny.
The first movie’s story was a classic find-the-MacGuffin quest. Vol. 2 kicks off when Rocket steals some batteries — so essentially the same plot as my summer of ’85. (Hey, man, I was just trying to keep my Walkman charged!) The golden-skinned owners of the power cells give chase, and the Guardians find themselves helped by a man who claims to be Peter’s dad.
Their rescuer is Kurt Russell. An opening sequence shows him on Earth in 1980, cleverly CGI’d back to his Escape From New York days. He’s grown older now, although his hairstyle hasn’t: It looks like he stole it from Laurence Olivier’s Zeus in the original Clash of the Titans. (Though if you know your Greek mythology you’ll agree he’s more of a Cronus.) He takes the Guardians to his homeworld, a decorative fusion of Oz and Middle-earth called Ego, and proceeds to bond with Peter over a How I Met Your Mother monologue.
Peter is played by Chris Pratt, pitching his performance perfectly between emotional truth and insouciance: His funerary oration late in the film has me laughing and feeling choked up in the same moment. Zoe Saldana returns as Gamora (the green one), as does Michael Rooker as privateer Yondu (the blue one) and Karen Gillan as Gamora’s evil sister, Nebula (the indigo one). Was this film sponsored by Crayola?
Allegiances are forged, broken, mended and remade throughout the busy film, which at two-anda-quarter-hours runs at least 20 minutes longer than it has to.
There’s a lot of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, a bit of the enemy of the enemy of my enemy’s enemy is my friend, and even the occasional the enemy of the giant space slug that’s trying to eat my friend is my friend.
Guardians was written by its director, James Gunn, whose brother Sean does great work with the meaty secondary role of Kraglin, Yondu’s hench-pirate. There’s also Mantis, an empath played by Quebec-born Pom Klementieff. And I won’t even get into who appears in the five mid-to-post-credit sequences. You may want to take notes.
Or you may choose to just let the goofiness of the film wash over you, bolstered by such toetapping ’70s hits as ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky, Glen Campbell’s Southern Nights, George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord and Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) by Looking Glass.
Brandy is a fine song, but like most of that decade’s music, you might not want to base your life on its lyrics.
You may also learn from Guardians 2 not to steal batteries. Beyond that, it’s mostly just a fun ride. Aside from the fact that everyone in the galaxy has daddy issues, and Drax’s remark that “you earthers have hangups,” it never really takes itself too seriously. This is the greatest take-away any art can provide. I believe it was Pauline Kael who put it best when she said: I am Groot.