Imagine what it's like before watching. That's exactly what it's like.

Rating: 2/10 (23 April 2020)

This movie is oddly overrated even by Marvel movie standards. It garnered all this acclaim, was praised as 'Star Wars for this century' by some, and was even included in the 1001 Movies to Watch before You Die book. (Why not include the Fifth Element if this type of thing is going in too?).
Sorry, but this doesn't come equal with Star Wars or Star Trek. It doesn't have the complex world-building or imagination of Star Trek. (Even Serenity was better than this). Star Wars, at least the first six movies, had a very strong story with archetypical fantasy characters that were written well enough. GOTG has a bunch of assassins and thugs who don't really develop except for learning to work together; a predictable story trope that anyone could write and which was in one too many superhero movies even at the time. The story is lame, another 'get the Macguffin' plot line that would later be recycled in future Avengers movies. (With the same Macguffin, no less). Watch them team up to get the Macguffin! There, I summarized what is literally the entire storyline.
There are a couple of good quirks in here though...the incorporation of 70s music was a nice change and Chris Pratt sold the childish potty humor around half the time. There are a couple of good jokes sprinkled in here too, but good luck remembering them once the post-credit scene is over.
The directing is flat and similar to any other Marvel movie you've seen before. You can easily tell that Disney hired a squad of second-unit directors to shoot all the action scenes for the blockbuster-inexperienced director James Gunn, because these parts feel exactly the same as all the other Marvel films. (They probably all have the same second-unit team for actions scenes). Why Gunn is hailed as a new visionary director is beyond me, as is why everybody made such a big stink when he got fired for perverted tweets. Any director could do this sort of thing if they wanted to: add in your favorite 70s mix as a soundtrack, fill the script with profanity and bodily functions jokes, and then lay back and let the CGI do all the work. It's interesting that so many people are eager to forgive Gunn, and then those same people rant on about what a foul person Mel Gibson is, even though Gibson is a much better director with a firmer grasp on storytelling. But no, Gunn's 'old' tweets are from 2008, Gibson's drunken rant was in 2006, and the latter still somehow deserves to be held accountable while the former is being unjustly attacked. I'm sorry, no. This is hypocrisy to the nth degree. to I'm looking forward to Gibson's next films and I couldn't care less about whatever junk Gunn is working on now.