Surprisingly Bad

Rating: Null/10 (20 June 2015)

While the film may be enjoyable for younger audiences, I found myself cringing at the dialogue, some of which made no sense and I simply cannot see people having conversation and talking to each other in that manner. The acting was atrocious, the soundtrack was out of place, and I can assume that the screenplay is a bore fest.
The film's soundtrack makes no sense, but, it does have some enjoyable songs. The songs were kind of catchy, upbeat, and are probably good to dance along to. However, the title sequence in the beginning in which Chris Pratt's character turns on some space music player and starts randomly dancing around made absolutely no sense. Who would walk into a dark and mysterious castle on an alien planet, turn on a music player, and the break out into dance when your on a mission? He even acted surprised when the aliens tried to arrest him for stealing that orb, which was his fault as he could've stole the orb and quickly fled, but, no, he had to randomly break out into dance from a band from Earth that I myself have never heard of, though the music itself wasn't all that bad.
The acting...oh, the acting. Talented actors Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana get caught up in this poorly-written mess that can only be saved by the impressive visual effects. We'll get to that in a moment. Chris Pratt's character just simply seemed unlikeable, and I didn't understand the boy's mother dying of cancer in the beginning, as I watched only 44 minutes of this mess and the only time the mother's death was mentioned was in that one scene. The dialogue made the character even worse.
Zoe Saldana was actually likable for the 44 minutes of this movie that I saw, and she absolutely nailed the lines she had that I was able to suffer through.
Now, on to the plot. I could not even begin to understand what was going on in some scenes, as the all-too-quick transitions from one scene to the other just dragged my attention away and kept me from having an understanding of what is developing, plot-wise. This hard- to-follow plot ruined the impressive fight scenes, as I could never understand why everyone was fighting.
Now, this is solely my opinion, so, if you enjoyed this movie, fine. I can understand why you may have liked this movie, but, for me, it was just a confusing, poorly-written mess with a nonsensical soundtrack, at least, for the 44 minutes that I was able to bear. The characters are somewhat forgettable. There are only two good things about this film that actually make it worth watching: Zoe Saldana and the visual effects. Zoe Saldana, while by no means in her best role, absolutely nailed her role in my honest opinion, even though, as I said, I only watched 44 minutes of the film.