Continuing the jovial musical theme from the last movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume 2 begins with a bit of similar music and the appearance of Kurt Russell as Peter Quill’s dad. Although the vibe is lighthearted it makes an interesting early plot development and of course it’s very cool to see Kurt Russell involved this time round, working alongside Chris Pratt – or against him, as the movie unfolds. Both are outstanding actors. Two of my favourite action hero movie stars, coming from different generations.
The second scene is overwhelmed by jovial musical and dancing too, as this movie is beginning to look very childish and uninteresting, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for a while since it’s still gradually rolling through the opening credits.
Before the end of the first half hour we see Kurt Russell as Ego Quill introduce himself to his son, and we see Silvester Stallone make an appearance as the head of the 100 clans of Ravagers, of which Yondu leads the only one that Sly’s character is displeased with and has exiled. Stallone has an extremely minor role in this movie, but it’s good to see him nevertheless. Russll has a major role in this movie, and it’s a shame to see him turn out to be the main antagonist, but it was kind of entertaining.
Chris Pratt has gained a little weight since the first Guardians movie – but it’s not a big deal – he still has plenty of character for doing a good job in his range of roles ranging from action to drama to humour to weirdness. His weight is actually the butt of a joke in his next outing – Avengers: Infinity War (2018) – so when Guardians 2 was released in 2017 and they were writing the script to Avengers 2018 they probably clocked on to the same thing I clocked on to, but by then Chris had actually lost a little weight so the joke didn’t work so well.
Although this movie goes on for over a couple of hours, it still seems a bit one-dimensional, as if it would benefit from another 30-45 minutes to add another layer of rich plot to the movie.
Overall, I rate it just about OK – no more, no less.