This is too intelligence-insulting, even for a Marvel space comedy with talking raccoons

Rating: 7/10 (15 August 2017)

This movie was so damn disappointing. There was barely anything good in it, I seriously don't understand how the hell did it get such good reviews from both critics and fans. I guess it's pretty easy to entertain dumb people.
I've seen the first one multiple times and I loved it. The characters were cool and lovable, the action scenes were well done and full of tension, the humor was good, but not overused and forced, it barely had any boring moments.
This movie though? It was a mess. I honestly don't know where to start.
The characters were basically dumbed down and less interesting versions of themselves from the first movie. All the time they're acting idiotic, saying pathetically written dialogue and dumb jokes, and then they suddenly go emotional, and I guess we were supposed to feel... sad, or something? Because that doesn't really work. It's like, I don't know, having one of those thieves in Home Alone have a mental breakdown in the middle of the movie. It just doesn't work. Kurt Russell's villain was ridiculous. He had a few jokes, a bunch of boooring exposition, and then he turned into a hilarious and completely unmenacing villain you can just cringe at. I love how everyone endlessly complained about Ultron two years ago, but no one had to say anything about this godawful villain. Those golden- skinned villains were even worse, I just wanted them to stop appearing in every few scenes. So unmenacing and lazily written. When that priestess announced that she will hunt them down again in the post-credit scene, I was like "NO! GOD, PLEASE, NO!" Sylvester Stallone's cameo was pretty pointless and distracting. Why couldn't they just leave his character out of the movie, or cast someone else? Who the hell asked for Stallone's mumbling botoxed ass in the MCU?
The action scenes were also ridiculous. None of them had any tension, I literally never felt like characters were in danger at all, because they just kept surviving the impossible and get rescued. The special effects were really weird and too colorful. Were the VFX supervisors of this movie gay? If not so, then why the hell was everything rainbow-colored? What the heck? You're not making a freakin' My Little Pony movie, for God's sake! The entire last action sequence was a bad joke, they went totally DC there. I just felt my brain cells dying off when Mantis managed to make Ego fall asleep when he was in his full supergod mode.
Now we come to the humor. There was a lot of it in the last movie too, but there it was just an icing on the cake and a fine addition to all the great character moments and exciting action scenes. Here... Urgh! It was overused to hell and back right from the start. Why isn't comedy one of this movie's genres on IMDb? Because every scene had at least three jokes, the movie completely relied on humor. And, to be honest, it didn't work either. The jokes were so unfunny. They felt so recycled and repetitive to the point where it actually got really annoying. I literally haven't even smirked even once during this movie, except for the Mary Poppins scene with Yondu. Also, did they really have to force at least one joke in every scene? Even in the ones that are supposed to be serious? Come on, guys! They even crammed unnecessary humor in the scenes where Drax talked about his brutally slaughtered family. That's just too damn much!
The ending was decent, I guess, but it's so obvious that they made it a total tear-jerker to get us emotional and make us forget how underwhelming the movie was.
Overall, this movie just felt so disappointing. It was nothing of an addition to the MCU. We could've had Thanos, one of the heroes from the other MCU movies, or even an Infinity Stone, but I guess James Gunn just wanted to make a pointless, dumbed down rehash of the first movie. I honestly didn't find it any better than Suicide Squad or Batman v Superman. I'm glad he won't be directing any of the Infinity War movies, the Russo brothers know how to perfectly handle MCU, unlike him. I guess he's just another one-hit-wonder.