CHRIS PRATT GOES HOFF IN GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
Daft in-jokes, a talking raccoon.. and The Night Manager’s star as the love interest. What a glorious inter-galactic blast of...
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2 Cert: 12A 2hrs 16mins
Ilove Guardians Of The Galaxy. It’s fast become one of my favourite Marvel Comics franchises. I love the cheesy Seventies pop, its exuberant silliness and the fact that one of its characters – Groot – is essentially a tree. But even having caught up with the hugely engaging 2014 original recently, I’d struggle to summarise what happened first time around, at least once this motley band of space-brothers – and one space-sister – came together-and decided to rush around the galaxy doing ‘something good, something bad or perhaps a bit of both’.
However, if pushed, I’d say Ronan, the main baddie, was dead, poor Groot had been heroically reduced to a cutting, and Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), our discodancing, Walkman-wearing hero, had discovered that there were serious doubts about his parentage. His late mother was definitely from Earth but his father… as the new film gets under way, Peteris holding on to the idea that his father-was David Hasselhoff of Knight Rider fame. See what I mean about exuberant silliness?
It is the last point – Peter’s parentage, not The Hoff – that provides the narrative heart of this eagerly anticipated sequel, which turns out to be every bit as chaotic, complicated and fun as the original. From the opening moment we squint at the screen, as the action flashes back to 1980 and we think ‘Hang on, isn’t that a young-looking Kurt Russell?’, we’ve got a fair idea of where we might be heading.
Yes, Russell, who has already breathed fresh life into the Fast And Furious franchise, is here to weave his grizzled, grey-maned old magic on the Guardians and, from his timely entrance to save them from surely certain death, he does so very well. ‘My name is Ego,’ he says with a quiet, bearded grin, ‘and I am your father, Peter.’
Hmm, anyone else think having a dad called Ego might not be entirely a good idea?
Russell and Pratt are beautifully cast – peas from the same laid-back, wisecracking, vaguely-surfer-dude pod, albeit peas a generation apart. Their scenes together are some of the best in a film once again directed and co-written by James Gunn, who has made the franchise his own.
And yes, it really is a franchise now, with a third
film already in the pipeline, when, presumably, Sylvester Stallone – who graces this one but briefly – will play a bigger part. So what happens this time around? Well, obviously Peter being reunited with his father is the headline news, but that all happens while the Guardians are busy escaping the golden-skinned citizens of the Sovereign, whom they’ve upset because Rocket (the genetically engineered raccoon character voiced by Bradley Cooper – do keep up) has relieved them of some particularly valuable batteries. Ayesha, the female leader of the Sovereign, is played by Elizabeth Debicki, who made such an impact on TV’s The Night Manager and doesn’t go unnoticed here. Not by Peter, anyway, who is forced to apologise for his roving eye to his green-skinned, still-not-quite-girlfriend, Gamora (Zoe Saldana).
So what exactly is the state of their relationship? The very funny Drax (played by former wrestler Dave Bautista) is doubtful. ‘There are two types of people in the universe – those who dance and those who don’t.’
We’ve known Peter is a dancer from the opening scenes of the first film, but Drax is convinced the warrior-minded Gamora is not. Ah, but is he right when he’s wrong about so much else? Either way, she and Peter spend a lot of time here speaking about ‘the unspoken thing’ between them, a running joke, which – like so much in Guardians Of The Galaxy – is as clever as it is silly and is almost as enjoyable as the one about the meaning of ‘metaphor’. And, yes, franchise fans will be pleased to know, that does get another outing here. At two-and-a-quarter hours, the film is ultimately a little too long and convoluted for its own good and loses traction as Ego’s true identity and divine plan are revealed. For a while it just seems to become an endless series of spectacular visual effects. But Gunn is learning as he goes and is certainly better at balancing all the silliness and fun with some proper darker moments. The explanation for why Gamora is flesh and blood while her sister Nebula (Doctor Who star Karen Gillan) is a cyborg is both shocking and moving. He even has the confidence to finish the film on an emotional down-note, as we bid a tear-jerking farewell to… ah, that would be telling. But you only take that sort of risk when you’re positive you can deliver more fun in the next instalment. Gunn is clearly sure he can, and I am too.