Star Trek on 100% Pure Colombian Cocaine

Rating: 5/10 (5 August 2014)

The good:
1) Amazing visual effects. 2) Brilliant use of color/world building. 3) Interesting characters, nice balance of screen time 4) Enjoyable action, not too long. 5) Generally good acting from main cast, although Zoe sleepwalks through.
The frustrating (AKA What Hollywood will never stop doing)
1) Painting humans various colors does not make a believable space alien, especially when put next to visual marvels (pun not intended) like Groot and the amazing technology. This is not the 60's & I don't care if this is based on a comic book, please stop painting people and adding metal mohawks, expecting us to take it any more serious than Swamp Thing. 2) English is still the preferred language in the universe? Really? Nearly a 200 million dollar budget and you can't make up some different languages? Oh but they are using British accents so it's believable. 3) Cliché alley. How many times are we going to see the bad guy literally explode into a bunch of pieces at the end? How many times will we be served a macguffin that destroys planets? Did we not already do this with all the previous Avenger films? 4) Over stuffed. We did not need all the characters besides the main cast and villains, and the sidekick bad girl is terrible. 5) The villains. Seriously? These races of evil villains (mostly comprised of males apparently) all happen to look evil, have little to no color, and spend their times waltzing around primitive looking spaceship decks, being evil just...because they are evil? Do these people have any dimensions? They speak of being angry but have no wives, no interests, no motives. It is getting old. 6) Stuffing nostalgic music and movie references does not make your film classic or original, it is quite the opposite. Tarantino is good and forcing his taste of music on you...gradually and indeed charmingly, but in this film it is just contrived..just there to say "hey this stuff was cool" ...so what? Seriously...I love Pac Man...so can you throw some pac man stickers on Star Lord and get an extra million in box office? I guess so.
In Summary:A Fun Ride But Still Just More of the Same. Not original, but definitely an interesting watch. I accept now that what passes as a masterpiece is what copies from the past few decades of great cinema....so I will have to get used to it.