A fairly good fun ride but definitely NOT as good as #1

Rating: 6/10 (8 May 2017)

We knew going into this that Rocket and Groot, with strong support from Draxx, would carry this film. We saw that in the trailers, as we saw very important pivotal joke moments ruined for us before we got to see them in the movie. And this all came to pass.
Rocket, Groot, and Draxx, do indeed carry this movie, with some minor support from the excellent Michael Rooker character Yondo.
Look for Chris Pratt to be pretty much yawning and getting a paycheque in the background, with the complete miscast Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone (really???) getting into the franchise and ruining it.
Another big disappointment is the main bad guy race. I was a huge fan of the Kree and Ronan the Accuser in Vol 1, and I thought Lee Pace did a fantastic job in that movie.
Compare that to what we get in Vol. 2 - Golden Snobs who play video games to attack you with their spacedrones, led by a petulant young queen who struts around in her golden cape pouting at people and things.
We have lots of tear jerking in this one too, so thank god for Rocket's smart ass mouth and Draxx's off the wall humor. We have Chris and Gamorra dancing and making googly eyes, we have Gamorra and Nebula making up as sistas, extremely quickly and with no development, and we have the wonderful character of Yondo getting slain as the sacrificial 'good guy death' that we seem to always need in a sequel.
AND we see Starlord's classic vintage 80's WALKMAN get destroyed!
So in one movie we see THREE of the tentpole structures from the first movie that carried it, namely, the eternal hatred rivalry of Gamorra vs Nebula, the constant threat of the deadly and resourceful scavanger Yondo, and the retro 80's theme of StarLord's ancient WALKMAN and MIX TAPES, all completely DESTROYED!!!!
But don't worry, as marketed, BABY GROOT IS CUTE. The number of teenage girls fawning and awwwing over him, including my own daughter, was a tidal wave of vomit all on it's own. Yes, the marketing engineered living Cupie doll was very cute, and pretty much had to carry the movie at points on his tiny leaf sprouting shoulders.
But in the end, as one might expect, it was Kurt Russell literally playing GOD, as a planet sized life form that somehow has troubles killing the good guys with his energy tentacles at the end of the movie. It was painful watching Kurt and Chris work through this awful material, even when they were deliberately making fun of it it came off as awkward and awful. We end up wanting to spend the entire movie with Yondo and Rocket in jail, trying to get baby groot to bring them stuff to break out with (the highlight of the movie). We end up feeling like Gamorra when she takes a walk out to the fields away from Kurt's Shangri-La 60's acid trip palace, because, THIS PLANET SUX! Yes it does, Gamorra, wish we could take a walk too.