Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 - 4 Stars

The Guardians gang are back! Quill (Chris Pratt) is devastated by his loss of Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and the rest of the team are trying to hold it together.

When Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) throws Rocket (Bradley Cooper) into a coma, however, the team has to travel across the Galaxy to track down a piece of code to save the deadly racoon - in the process, discovering the horrors perpetrated on the animal, by the nefarious High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji).

The beauty of James Gunn’s work with Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 (hereafter, GOTG3), is that he never shies away from the painful, tortuous and emotional.

Sure, the movie may be overstuffed. Sure, some of Rocket’s old friends will give you nightmares by virtue of their likeness to Toy Story characters that traumatized you as a kid. But ultimately, Gunn succeeds where so many directors of the past few MCU films have failed, by engaging honestly and authentically with the material.

There’s witty quips all around here, and Chris Pratt is mercifully back in the Star Lord box that he seems to have drifted from as a side character in recent adventures. But the star of the show is Rocket Racoon, and the character (and voice actor Bradley Cooper) do a fantastic job of grounding the film and tugging on the heart strings.

Visually, the film continues the trend of the GOTG films - expansive and panoramic space sequences, coupled with gorgeous set design, crazy characters, and every colour imaginable. The music is also, as always with this franchise, on point; a hodgepodge of classic bangers.

All that said, the film is undoubtedly jam packed and does run long. It’s tough, at this stage of the MCU, to feel fresh and exciting again. At some point during this film, those familiar thoughts of ‘Oh,

I know what’s going to happen now’ pop up. The movie plays by the rules, despite its claims of breaking them, and that remains the ultimate stumbling block in this cinematic universe.

GOTG3 is a welcome return to quality entertainment from Marvel, but the fact

B - 4 Stars

it isn’t bad doesn’t mean it is close to as good, groundbreaking, or strong as the original.

A distinct lack of actual book references in this film.

The gang is back together again. This time, Vivian (Jane Fonda) is getting married, and Diane (Diane Keaton), Carol (Mary Steenburgen) and Sharon (Candice Bergen) take her to Italy for her bachelorette. There, they find stunning landscapes, oodles of prosecco, drama in a pair of dastardly porters, and romance - new, old and rekindled.

Look, this film is going to appeal to a certain type of person no matter how terrible it is. And it is objectively terrible. The plot is borderline nonexistent, t he jokes are the lowest of low hanging fruit, and the performances are borderline sleepwalking. Indeed, one of the funniest parts of this film is watching these characters suddenly break out into ‘tears’ - quotations needed, as the performance level here never allows for real tears, sounds that could really indicate tears, or indeed any change in facial expression.

The film also has a series of tremendously annoying habits. The first is that it insists on using predominantly film quotes as dialogue for its character (contrary to the media referenced in the title), and having its characters immediately reference what film it came from.

Think nearly 2 hours of “Of all the gin joints. Casablanca.” The second gripe is that halfway through the film, Diane and Vivian just go stand on a balcony and explain the plot of the previous half of the movie, and then literally say “I wonder what will happen next”. We get it. It’s a movie. Some things have happened. Some things have happened. Don’t pad the runtime with this.

Finally, and perhaps most frustratingly, Candice Bergen delivers a speech in prison that stops and starts more times than the ending of Return of the King.

The most important thing to remember though, is that none of this matters an ounce. The cinema we saw it in, full of people geared towards this exact sort of completely banal, inoffensive, afternoon content, absolutely loved it.

They roared with laughter at all the right moments, and to be fair probably shed a tear. If you loved the first movie, you’ll love this movie too.