Lukewarm and formulaic - but funny.

Rating: 6/10 (6 August 2014)

I have had a few days to ponder the film "Guardians of the Galaxy", and what makes it so popular is probably its greatest sin; the film is too cautious and accessible. Now that being said, one should never expect a subversive, though-provoking film for the $170M price tag that Guardians had. However, the film was constructed to please as wide an audience as possible. What that means for the audience is that cinema lovers will be disappointed as it fails to offer anything fresh or new, marvel purists will be disappointed because the film fails to capture the comic effectively, and general audiences will be disappointed because they were served up another, formulaic, apologetic film, with too many uninteresting villains, nonsensical plot points to hit the buttons needed (do we really need to know WHY WHEN and HOW they are called the Guardians of the Galaxy) side characters and cameos that are completely unnecessary other than to say "Hey! John C Reilly is in this!" and 80s music included for no particular reason other than to please the nostalgia of those that grew up with this music (after all, thats all comic book films are, nostalgia). Ultimately the film suffers from the fact that most audience members do not know these characters. That isn't a bad thing. We don't need this film to be the first act only.
That being said, the film is worth a watch. The writing was clever and quite funny during multiples scenes so that even the most critical viewer can't help but chuckle. Will you laugh? Yes. Will you be entertained? Yes. Will you remember this film one year from now? That remains to be seen, but the staying power of this film is very low.
Because of the above reasons i give the film a 6/10 rating. I would recommend seeing it.