A surprisingly good movie

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2014)

Like the 2012 film "The Avengers", "Guardians of the Galaxy" is a movie that had a lot riding against it and in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, would have failed. "Guardians of the Galaxy" knows how ridiculous it is and plays with that aspect to make the film work. While primarily a comedy film, the movie still manages to have some serious and sentimental moments in it that do not feel out of place, my guess being that that is attributed to James Gunn's (Super, Slither) directing and writing skills.
Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), who was abducted from earth as a young boy, has now become a criminal who calls himself Starlord. On a planet, Quill steals the an orb, which serves as the movie's MacGuffin, and escapes from a group of people trying to stop him. Quill refuses to return to his colleague Yondu (Michael Rooker) so they can make money off the orb together, who subsequently places a bounty on Quill's head. When Quill tries to sell the orb, he is met by the resistance of three others, Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) who want to capture Quill for the bounty on his head, and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) who wants to take the orb and give it to her buyer. All four are captured and sent to a prison where they encounter Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). The group learns from Gamora, a former minion of Ronan (Lee Pacer) that Ronan wants the orb to destroy the galaxy, the five criminals band together to escape the prison and get the orb to Gamora's buyer, with Drax wanting to use his freedom as an opportunity to kill Ronan.
While other Marvel movies seemed to have a lot of comedy that felt out of place at time or got annoying, "Guardians of the Galaxy" is able to make the comedy work with it. With the ridiculousness of the movie, "Guardians of the Galaxy" would probably of only worked as a comedy. In the hands of a lesser writer and possibly director, the movie would try to work by pointing out how ridiculous everything in it really is, but instead they made it an actual comedy. Even though it was a comedy, it still managed to have some serious and sentimental moments with investment in the characters. Comedy-wise, this is probably one of the best ways I've seen it used because it is not needlessly funny and it knows just how much to give out.
All of the actors in this movie are very good and have good chemistry with one another, even though half of them are computer generated. I usually do not bring up acting unless I am really surprised by it or am just flabbergasted at how bad it is, but I really felt the need to comment with this one. While none of the performances are Academy Award worthy, with a film like this there was a chance that some of the actors would just do as bad a job as possible to see if they could get away with it. All of the actors give as good a performance as they can. Surprisingly, Dave Bautista, the voice of Drax, is very good in the movie because usually having a wrestler acting in a movie hurts it, but Bautista does a very good job.
I'd say the one area of the film that lacked was with the villain of Ronan. Other than the fact that he is one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, there really isn't much to his character and he is kind of a bore. Compared to other Marvel villains like Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Magneto (Ian McKellen/Michael Fassbender), and the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), there isn't anything that really sets him apart as a character. While he is not as badly written as the villains in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2", they at least had aspects that set them apart.
Complete with good characters, a good story, and a mixture of funny and serious moments that don't feel like they contradict each other, "Guardians of the Galaxy" is a surprisingly good movie. In fact, this movie was fun, unlike a lot of comic book movies have recently been.