Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Rating: 8/10 (24 November 2014)

Now this is a pleasant surprise - it's an excellent action comedy and I enjoyed it. Big as it is it may even be the Star Wars of the current cgi gamer generation, only shame that all the characters and maybe the stories were variously imagined decades ago in prehistory. Not forgetting the music; going by the sound quality I only wish my audio cassettes could have stood the test of time so well with such perfect stereo separation and stability after 26 years of constant playing.
It starts by a deathbed on Earth in 1988 and swiftly moves onto somewhere else bleak and grimy in the Universe 26 years later. A disparate group of five weird criminals is forced together for their common good under the leadership of Star Lord in defeating a weird baddie Ronan (the barbarian) who will destroy the Universe if he's gets the chance with his new shiny toy, the Infinity Stone. It has been explained to me by a knowledgeable friend that it's supposed to be far more complicated than that and that all manner of gemstones are or will be involved next time. As well as mayhem. Amidst all the cgi cartoon conflagrations there's a generally delightful repartee between all of the main characters, most times hitting the mark but occasionally missing. It's all taken at such a (literally) breakneck speed that it's not surprising though. The proto-Guardians are Star Lord who is reliving Han Solo except that he likes '70's pop songs far more and even enough to die for, Gamora is playing a green Rihanna for the kids, Rocket Racoon is without Gideon's Bible, Drax is built like a power station, and Groot is most definitely playing himself! Or, at least I think he is, as I've never read any of stories or even know or want to know 1% of the tortuous histories. However, no matter how interesting or amusing it gets the indifferent approach to a gruesome and colossal loss of life is always annoying to me – I mean, no one ever had to die horribly in Popeye cartoons and it still does nothing for me to see how many ingenious ways of painful annihilation can be sadistically portrayed by cgi. And must a family fun fantasy film have to open with emotionally fraught scenes of a boys' mother dying of cancer simply to provide the raison d'etre for a Walkman plot device? But as an even better old song goes I Guess I Just Wasn't Made For These Times. Although overall it's not too bad - I did laugh at Groot's violent method of despatching swathes of surprised baddies with a sweep of his arm, and his silly wooden look back over his shoulder afterwards. I wonder if Van Halen's Dance The Night Away was on director Gunn's hit list of olde tunes – it was used very effectively in Mission To Mars but no one watching this would've remembered that very old film.
With reservations it's the best Marvel Disney I've seen to date. Two hours whizzed by watching this colourful well-made hokum and I didn't reach for the internet once, always good yardsticks, so exceptional stuff for the kids, pretty good nonsense for us oldies too. My bottom-line advice is to watch it simply because there's a whole new complex franchise looming out there: one day every other film made anywhere will be of Marvel's Universe so better try to get up to speed as soon as you can.