Not nearly as good as Volume 1

Rating: 4/10 (13 May 2017)

This movie has already earned the better part of a billion dollars in box office receipts, so it's like spitting in the wind to write a bad review of it. But here it is. This movie is a hot mess. A melting pot of a bunch of old SF movie plots blended into what's going to be largely hard to understand for a lot of people not already enraptured by SF or the Marvel Universe. Our heroes start out doing what they always do: taking on impossible tasks and succeeding. Then pissing everyone off and becoming goats. The movie then fractures into many, many subplots. There are not one but two father/son-issues subplots. There's the men-become-gods cliché trope (calling Gary Mitchell). There's the rival siblings subplot. There are not one but two budding romances. There's the inferiority complex of a goodhearted character who pushes away his friends so he won't get hurt by them. There's the evil-but-goodhearted space pirates plot. Also there are numerous bits and pieces lifted from dozens of other SF films including several in the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises. There's also plenty, plenty of pretty, pretty CGI eye candy.
If you can't get enough of this stuff, then Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 is a buffet for you. Eat hearty.
Oh yeah, many of the songs are far more obscure this time and they were an integral part of Volume 1.