300 songs??!!! (°ロ°)

Rating: 9/10 (17 May 2017)

I didn't care much for the first Guardians Of The Galaxy, I'd never heard of any of the characters (except for Rocket & Thanos) before seeing it & went in not expecting much. It was okay, good even, but nothing I'd be talking about after seeing it.
So as you can imagine I went into Vol. 2 thinking the same thing.
I haven't been this pleasantly surprised since Fury Road.
It's a huge improvement on the first film. The characters feel more genuine & likable, the soundtrack was great (both original score & music tracks), the humour (for about 90% of the film) was spot on & the story was very well executed.
From looking at a few reviews, & seeing countless comments on Facebook pages, I was rather concerned about Groot being made into some overly cute mascot, not unlike the Minions, but his role in the film was great & it didn't feel like they were cheaping him out at all.
I still had a slight issue with Rocket & the delivery of some of his lines, like in the first film. In the serious/dramatic/action scenes he was great, no complaints here. But whenever there's a scene where he's suppose to be funny it felt rather forced. Like the whole scene with Taserface, it started out quite well but they dragged Rocket's dialogue out far too long for it to be funny. & also all the crew laughing at his jokes just felt like some kind of forced laugh track.
Yondu was great in this film. One thing I did like about vol. 1 was Michael Rooker's performance & he had a much larger role in this film that followed nicely from the first one. More of his back story & relationship with Starlord was revealed & he came of as a spectacular character, if not slightly overpowered with his arrow.
Chris Pratt delivers as usual. Again, I felt his humour in the first film was really forced & felt totally artificial (like the opening & final battle dancing) but in this one he really delivered. His references from his own time on Earth were very enjoyable, right from the music he grew up with to forming a giant, celestial Pacman during the final battle.
I did feel as though the introduction between Starlord & his father was a bit lackluster. They already made it clear at the start of the film that Starlord still feels strongly about who his father is after the high priestess mentions it to him. But when Ego lands & tells him straight away he's his father it was just sort of a "Oh, okay." kind of moment. It reminded of Kowalski from Fantastic Beasts when he was first told that magic was real. Didn't seem to have much of an impact. But throughout the film the Relationship between Starlord & his father flourished nicely.
Would definitely recommend this film to anyone & I am really looking forward to the next installment in the series. Whether that be another stand alone Guardians film or (most likely) during Infinity War.