Bigger-But Not Better-Than The Original, "Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2" Offers Plenty Of Character, Action, Emotion, And Remains Damn Fun

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2017)

"Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2" is the sequel to the highly successful "Guardians Of The Galaxy" movie released in 2014 that introduced us to a band of misfits brought together to save the galaxy. In this installment Star-Lord is determined to learn more about his heritage: who he is, where he came from, who his father is, and meets his father (played by Kurt Russell) while he and the other Guardians have to eliminate a threat and save the galaxy once again.
Vol. 2 isn't necessarily better than the first one. It suffers from what I like to call "sequelitis." It is bigger however, but not from an action standpoint, but rather a character standpoint and I appreciated that. When this film has the choice of giving us a gigantic action over a heartfelt character moment it will chose the character moment. It is a character driven film, with the action scenes, while there are quite a few, far between each other.
The first 20-30 of the film really doesn't have a focus and feels a bit choppy. It feels like a sitcom released to theaters and not all of the jokes land. There are a lot of jokes and moments of humor and at times during this opening of the movie it became too much, almost as if the movie relied on them to keep you invested.
Some of the characters are a waste. Drax doesn't do much in the movie. He kind of just hangs out. That was disappointing to see, as Drax was one of my favorite parts of the first movie. Another miss was Stallone's character. Stallone should have been kicking ass in this movie. Instead he is sidelined only appearing in the movie for a measly 5 minutes of screen time accumulating two scenes. It was a huge miss, and really could have had Stallone play a big part in this movie, though it does set him up for a much larger role in the third installment.
The action scenes were really cool to look at. The visual effects and CGI were top notch. Everything in these scenes were edited and filmed in a very good way. The CGI on Baby Groot was seamless.
I like how the movie focused on Star-Lord's heritage and the numerous relationships these characters have with each other and certain things. This is why I pay to see movies like this because we have the characters that we have grown to love.
The villains are lame. They're just gold people that the movie sets up and doesn't really do anything with. Malekith from "Thor: The Dark World" looks amazing compared to them. These gold people are probably my least favorite villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date and proof Marvel hasn't fixed their villain problem.
Still a damn good time though. When the action, humor, and emotions mix together and mesh very well the movie flows with much more force behind it.
I am going to give "Guardians Of The Galaxy: Vol. 2" an 8.0/10.