Guardians of Galaxy Volume 2 It’s a real blast! The craziest comic book heroes

The sequel, again written and directed by James Gunn, is full of pleasures from the very start, when a startlingly young, digitally enhanced Kurt Russell appears in the guise of a lovestruck earthling.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 (12A)

Rating:

When a film with the word ‘galaxy’ in its title arrives as part of a franchise comprising the word ‘universe’, you know someone is thinking big. But the summer of 2014 was enriched by the first Guardians Of The Galaxy film not because of its size or scope, but its humour.

It was a genuine hoot. And the folk behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe carried on laughing all the way to the bank. At the last count, the movie had made well over three-quarters of a billion dollars at the global box-office.

I don’t expect this sequel, again written and directed by James Gunn, to take the planet by storm quite as spectacularly. Partly this is because it strains so hard to be as wackily irreverent as the first film, and this time the effort shows.

Nonetheless, it is full of pleasures from the very start, when a startlingly young, digitally enhanced Kurt Russell appears in the guise of a lovestruck earthling.

Further pleasures include tongue-in-cheek cameos from Sylvester Stallone and David Hasselhoff, and a performance by Elizabeth Debicki — the willowy Australian actress who turned heads in last year’s BBC drama The Night Manager — that is pure gold in more ways than one.

She is hilariously po-faced, and indeed gold-faced, as High Priestess Ayesha, the leader of an alien race called the Sovereign. They have hired Peter Quill (the excellent Chris Pratt) and his posse of squabbling, wise-cracking mercenaries, but turn hostile when troublesome raccoon Rocket (voiced as before by Bradley Cooper) pinches their prized batteries.

Why batteries? You don’t need to know, which is just as well, because I wasn’t sure, either.

Anyway, chased by Ayesha’s remote-controlled spaceships, Quill pilots his craft pell-mell through the galaxy with Rocket and the rest of his gang. These are again green-hued warrior Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the jolly non-green giant Drax (Dave Bautista) and Groot (voiced, or rather squeaked, by Vin Diesel). Last time Groot was a fully-grown tree, but here he’s little more than a twiglet…

Source: Guardians of Galaxy Volume 2 review | Daily Mail Online