Skip to main content

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 Review

What I liked: Baby Groot is the best thing about this movies. If you have seen the trailer with the extended conversation between Rocket the raccoon and baby Groot about when to push the detonation button, you have seen the best of the movie and if you're pressed for time, can probably leave it at that. If you have more time you could expand your viewing to include the opening fight scene, with some pretty awesome alien smashing action, rainbows, and classic rock music, and the concluding fight scene, which involves baby Groot, explosions, and Pacman. If you really want to branch out you can watch a fight scene in the middle that mostly involves about 100 mercenaries being beaten by a raccoon in the woods. I liked that Rocky has moved on from his boxing career to being an intergalactic criminal, it really seems like a step up. I predict that in the next movie he will be the underdog in a boxing match with an alien and will make an incredible comeback to win. I liked that the bad guys' whole space ship fleet was just an arcade game. If my experience in flight simulators is any indication, this is not a very effective military. I have decided that the firework funeral is the best plan ever. I hope my wake will consist of nothing but millions of fireworks.

What I didn't: First and foremost the music was not as good. There is a lot of cool classic rock music they really could have picked better songs. The evil master plan is dumb both in premise and execution. Evil villains these days, the all want to rule the universe. Can't they just try and rob a bank or something? Build a cool death ray? You may remember from the last movie that this group of heroes is made up entirely of scoundrels: assassins, thieves, bounty hunters, mercenaries, etc. It seems to be one of the goals of this movie to remind us that these heroes are bad people. They succeed rather gruesomely. Most of what made the first movie funny was that the jokes were unexpected and well timed. Instead of coming up with more clever or unexpected ideas the writers just expanded the jokes they made the first time. So, there were more inappropriate jokes, more awkward statements, and more random things that happened. But since it was all more of the same none of it was unexpected and so it lost most of the comic effectiveness. The other thing that the first movie had going for it was that it really didn't take itself too seriously. This one tries to be a little bit profound which really works against the whole silly nonsense thing they had going. So, it is mostly nonsense but not good at being silly.

Who should watch this? If you liked the first one, you will like this one, it's more of the same. If you didn't like the first one, you won't like this one, it's more of the same.

Would I watch it again? I'd rather watch the first one but there are scenes from this one that I will find online.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ready Player One Review

What I liked: I bet all of the developers loved making this film, I saw so many video game and movie references in the background of scenes. I bet all the developers just inserted their favorites like the ninja turtles, a whole platoon of halo soldiers, and orcs. That it was a video game made it possible and exciting to have all kinds of absolutely random physics and logic defying things happen. Obviously, I loved the T. Rex and who would not enjoy seeing Mechagodzilla or a cyborg orc driving a monster truck? Early in the movie they made good use of the video game architecture in a way that reminded me a bit of secret rooms in super mario. The characters visit the world of the Shining, which was amazing and hilarious. I loved the variety of characters, vehicles and weapons that we get to see and it is more fun (at least for me) that they draw from more than strictly the 1980's. I also really liked the music, for the most part the selections were great for the scenes. The book was
3 comments
Read more

Solo Reveiw

What I liked: The architecture of a heist movie has 4 stages: stage 1 explain how hard the job is, stage 2 come up with a ridiculously elaborate plan to accomplish the job and acquire hard to find equipment, stage 3 execute the plan but something goes terribly wrong, stage 4 sneaky twist and huge pay off. The Solo movie takes the bold move of streamlining the first two and a half steps, picking up with stage 3.5 "Something goes terribly wrong". This saves everyone the slow wind up to the actual action. This saved time translates into a movie with not one but all the heists. We have grand theft, customs evasion, train robbery, vault robbery, the classic hustle, and of course smuggling. I guess they may have tried to crowd too a little much in because they also almost always skip stage 4. This stage skipping also means that we don't know if the things they are doing are actually hard or they are just incompetent. I'm surprised more heist movies don't explore this
2 comments
Read more

Wrinkle in Time Review

What I liked: I liked Charles Wallace, that kid was funny. I liked that the ladies in crazy dresses were warriors and that the kids were warriors too. You know me I'm all about a good action movie with awesome fighting, but I liked that at least in this universe the defining characteristics of warriors were compassion, kindness, and love. Similarly, I liked that the bad guys weren't launching a massive military conquest of the universe, I mean everyone is doing that these days. Surprisingly, I liked the Mrs's dresses. They were crazy and over the top but it was fun that they changed with every teleportation and that they were completely absurd. The outfits were rather like the Mrs's wearing them, over the top and fantastical. Knowing all of them from other shows I may have had some unfulfilled expectations. At no point did anyone say "You get a wrinkle, and you get a wrinkle, Everyone gets a wrinkle!" which I must admit was a little disappointing. I also think
2 comments
Read more