Fun for the first hour and a half but sloppy, all over the place and too long

Rating: 5/10 (28 May 2017)

I really liked the first one. Very well done, amazing effects and set/landscape design, not to mention cool battle sequences and interesting characters.
This one failed to capitalize on virtually any of that. It was just missing the "WOW" factor that made last summer's original so much fun.
The dialogue and wit, while snappy at first, isn't as novel this time around and begins to wear thin about half way through the picture.
Hey, it's a comic book movie, right? But the ridiculousness of how powerful/deadly Yondu's little whistle arrow thing is (he's basically invincible when he has it? It can fly through inches thick solid metal? How does it make calculations so fast and know exactly where to go?) and the stupidity of the Sovereign Race pursuit story-line, complete impossibility of the way the Guardians evade multiple attacks on their ship by huge flying armies, and the over-sized, over-long funeral party for Yondu, attended by literally every Ravager in the galaxy, at the end really ruined it for me. It was just too long and too messy. And really - why do we need Sylvester Stallone?
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as a light summer popcorn action, sci-fi flick. It's an entertaining ride and you could do much worse on a summer afternoon or night. But the expectations generated by the first one were just too much to overcome, unfortunately and this one did absolutely no improvements or upstaging of the original.
Ultimately it's a bloated, piecemeal mess predicated on a thin plot with lots of cheap machinations to ensure that all of our heros, and even some people we don't like that much, end up being fine in what looked like impossible situations to get out of.
5.7/10