When heavy hitters like Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone star in a movie together, you had better have something interesting for them to do. Well, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" has both of those actors, and comes so close to delivering on that potential. That does not make it a bad film- it is a marginal improvement over the first film, but you cannot help but feel a peculiar sensation wondering why the filmmakers would have gone through all the trouble getting Sly only for him to appear in three brief scenes (I counted).
Mr. Russell fortunately gets a lot more screen time, all of it well deserved, playing Ego, the "god with a little "g"" father of Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord (Chris Pratt). The two share much of the movie together, and prove that having two charming actors often times results in the two sharing chemistry. However something "off" about Quill's father, or at least that is what one of Star-Lord's buddies thinks, and I will refrain from disclosing whether or not there is something. But the plot that forces the duo together is surprisingly inconsequential, with Quill's band of friends protecting Ayesha's batteries from a slimy CGI thing. They defeat it (of course they did, it is how the film opens), but one of his pals, Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), steals a handful of the batteries, they are hunted down by Ayesha's remote-piloted spaceships. Yes readers, this whole movie, this 136 minute long film all started because of batteries. What a premise...
But with Ego being a god, making Star-Lord a god also, doesn't that mean that any thrill the first "Guardians" film had was moot? (Logic like this is moot to a flick like this.) There is a lot of Kurt here, an actor talented enough to display affection when discussing his past with his long-lost son, but who is far from afraid to ham it up when the script asks for it. This is the Kurt Russell, the amount and the character, I so desperately pined for in "The Fate of the Furious."
The action is tame here, surprising for how many times galaxies are jumped and how many ships zip through space, but much of the time we watch our gang of primary characters talk to each other, then the set changes, then they talk some more. And I did not mind much of what they spoke, but the film frustratingly does not devote everything it has to the emotion it mentions. For each touching revelation there are two jokes slipped in, as if the filmmakers were unconvinced audiences would care for something other than glib remarks and the occasional space battle. Dear movie makers: we do!
The film fails to work on so many levels, particularly in the worlds it attempts to create; how can I be excited to visit alien planets when the lifeforms who inhabit them are simply humans painted green, or gold or blue?! Where is the imagination? Even the architecture is fairly human, never arousing the same foreign feeling that the "Alien" and "Star Wars" franchises so effortlessly evoke. This movie could have taken place on Earth- just trade the spaceships for jet planes and leave the face paint in the dressing room.
Drax (Dave Bautista) is a great example of that point by being such a poor film character, a buff, gray man who's only personality is to make painful observations in the most awkward fashion a screenwriter could imagine. There is so many scenes dedicated to him calling Mantis (Pom Klementieff) "ugly" that I quickly felt genuine dislike for the character (even if Mantis is presented here as more of a stereotype than a character). Rocket is another awful member of the titular gang, a CGI raccoon who's personality is purely to make fun of others for the first half of the film so that he can "learn his lesson" by the end. But his obnoxiousness is not what is most egregious here: he is just a raccoon created inside a computer. There is no personification, he does not "look" unique- he is, a raccoon who talks. His character is more congruous trading in his potty-mouth for dance moves in a Disney sing-a-long.
But Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) proved to be the bane of the movie, a character who says only "I am Groot" the entire film and acts like one of the babies in the "Rugrats" animated TV show. He exists solely to sell toys. The audience loved him. I did not- call me heartless, but he is one tree who is in desperate need of being chopped down.
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