vastly entertaining

Rating: 8/10 (14 June 2015)

An angry, confused son attends his mother's deathbed. Fading fast, and heavily medicated, she babbles about angels and shafts of light. When she passes, the boy flees the hospital, and is abducted by aliens. Many years later, he is a seasoned space traveller, a kind of hunter of space salvage, and a complete loner. Through scavenging a mysterious orb, he forms an alliance with a green female assassin, a literal-minded hulk, a wily raccoon, and a simple-minded but deadly tree. Everyone needs a family, and this becomes his. Guardians of the Galaxy is a bombastic space opera that throws postmodern self-reflexive humour, and homage to 70s music, into the genre mash. It all blends perfectly. The action scenes are spectacular, the characterisations contrast superbly, and the humour is literally laugh out loud at times. Most of all, the film has heart in a way that most European art-house posers will be snotty about, when secretly they would give their right arm to have this much emotional bang. Shamelessly sets up the sequel, but that is forgivable when they get this much right in the first film. Kudos to the screenwriters whose work underpins everything that succeeds here.