Humorous in places but predictable too

Rating: 7/10 (6 May 2017)

I won't rehash the story-line here as everyone will know that by now. Instead I'll talk about other elements.
The movie has some nice visuals and action sequences but they seem to be spaced out too much with more drama in between than the first GOTG. Rocket is an obnoxious character here while he seemed to be just a sarcastic quick witted character in the first one. His change at the end didn't make much sense because it wasn't Peter Quill who "gets" him.
What I liked about this movie is that it showed other worlds and other alien cultures in a manner similar to humanity and the animal kingdom. The filmmakers raised the philosophical question that just because some species don't look like us or feel like us or think like us, is it morally alright to annihilate them completely and make their world in our image? This is the question faced by Peter Quill, albeit he attacks his father for another reason altogether (which by the way was COMPLETELY predictable and I saw it coming a mile away after the big reveal!).
The filmmakers show different alien cultures and civilizations on other worlds who are pretty much the same as us in terms of basic survival. They eat, they live, they reproduce and they too fear death like us. In addition, living in space has made Peter Quill VERY VERY tolerant of other cultures and species. So much so that he falls in love with Gamora who is neither white skinned (as he is) nor dark skinned but..... GREEN SKINNED!!?? Peter represents something divine in all of us which needs to come out to the fore. The film makers could have easily made Gamora a White Woman but chose a black actress and then made her skin green in colour to send us the message that we must accept people as they are. A good message in of itself.
As for the rest of the movie, it sometimes drags on a bit and in some places it is so completely predictable that you might as well have been reading the script when it was written.
Good for a once see but will not hold up well on repeated viewings.