Nearly Perfect

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2017)

I really liked this film, but I wanted to really LOVE it. The only thing that prevented me from loving it was its fear of emotion. There were so many moments in this film that were high in emotion until they were struck down by unnecessary comedy. There were also some great emotional moments that weren't ruined, but there could have been so many more. Much of this unnecessary comedy came from Drax. It seemed to me that Drax wasn't the same character he was in the first film. In Vol. 1, Drax barely understood humor, while in Vol. 2, he is always either laughing obnoxiously or trying to make the audience laugh. It would seem that James Gunn knows how to create humor and knows how to create emotional moments, but he doesn't know when to keep them separate. I am assuming that Nicole Perlman was able to keep James Gunn in check while writing Vol. 1, but having full control of the script in Vol. 2 resulted in a tonally inconsistent film just a step away from great.