Frenetic, frequently funny 'Guardians' sequel propels viewers into near-sensory overload
Propelled by an ultra-snarky attitude and a retro soundtrack laden with baby boomer hits, “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2” tosses characters, explosions, fights, effects and bon mots at us so fast and furiously that it threatens to send us into tedious sensory overload.
Just in time, writer/director James Gunn pulls us back from the dis abyss by employing a scene switch, brow-raising revelation, jocular antic or sitcom-caliber exchange.
So much goes on and on in the visually dense and surprisingly suspenseless “Vol. 2” you get a sense that Gunn desperately overloaded it in an effort to replicate the breezy irreverence and novelty of the 2014 box office smash, based on the Marvel comic books.
That film, he told Entertainment Weekly, was all about the main characters becoming a family where “Vol. 2” is about being a family.
“Being a family is much harder,” Gunn noted. And, as it turns out, not as much fun.
The Marvelous misfit Guardians return as a makeshift family with affable Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and genetically modified raccoon Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) carrying on like squabbling kids trading prickly put-downs and exhibiting a strange form of juvenile interspecies sibling rivalry.
That leaves professional assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to act as their annoyed, mean, green mom, constantly chiding them for their behavior and settling everyone else's hash with blasters and blades.
Gamora confronts her own domestic problems with her psychotic sister Nebula (Karen Gillian) who wants Gamora dead, dead, dead! Because Dad liked her more.
The sequel opens with the mercenary Guardians - Quill, Gamora, Rocket, the muscled and eternally shirtless Drax (Dave Bautista) and baby tree trunk Groot (Vin Diesel, but is that really his voice?) - battling a generic space beastie called the Abilisk for the Sovereign, a race of golden humanoids who look as if they got on the bad side of 007 arch-villain Auric Goldfinger.
The Sovereign go from employers to pursuers after Rocket impulsively steals some of the planet's sacred batteries. (What? Duracell couldn't afford the product placement fee?)
The story, as the characters remind us, involves family, specifically Quill's lifelong search for his biological father, revealed as Ego the Living Planet, a godlike Marvel character introduced in a 1966 Mighty Thor comic book.
Kurt Russell arrests his tendency to lapse into John Wayne-isms as Ego, who shares the movie's best scenes with Star-Lord during almost-emotional father/son reunion moments.
(Gunn makes sure that Ego tells his son that he's a god “with a small G,” but not the God, undoubtedly to sidestep controversy.)
Ego says he has searched for Quill for years, yet, despite being a god with a small “G,” couldn't find him. But he did discover an enigmatic empathic creature, Mantis (Pom Klementieff), with insect eyes and two antenna that glow when she takes a being's emotional temperature or alters someone's feelings.
Pratt's Star-Lord has been raised by blue man troop member Yondu (Michael Rooker), ejected from the Ravagers intergalactic biker gang for violating their code of conduct.
Yondu possesses really bad teeth, but he has this ultracool arrow that works like an unstoppable guided missile directed by Yondu's whistles.
Frenetic and frequently funny (a prolonged bit about finding tape for a time bomb is inspired), “Vol. 2” moves so mercifully fast that we hardly notice the narrative potholes.
Gunn has an opportunity to fill them when he directs “Vol. 3,” reportedly arriving in 2020.
“Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2”
★ ★ ½
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Dave Bautista, Kurt Russell
Directed by: James Gunn
Other: A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual situations, violence. 137 minutes