Guardians of the Galaxy – Movie Review

 

Yeah, these guys are hooked on a feeling—a feeling called life! I may be overgeneralizing out the wazoo here, but ensemble casts really do have a special fit with comedies. In a drama, every character acts for himself and often at odds with each other, because that’s how you generate the layers of conflict that make good drama. But in comedies, no character can truly act for himself. Even when they’re at each other’s throats, they’re really working together to push the comedy forward, and teamwork is part and parcel of an ensemble.

That’s what makes Guardians so powerful a movie and, in some ways, one with far more personality and perhaps even likability than The Avengers. When the Avengers fight amongst themselves, they get in each other’s way and almost slow down the action; when the Guardians fight, the speed and rhythm of the action kicks up, and their every move is choreographed to get a laugh every few seconds. That takes a hell of a lot of good writing, so director-writer James Gunn and writer Nicole Perlman deserve high credit for the hit they’ve produced.

Of course, no amount of craft would be of any use if not for interstellar performances from the cast. The actors behind the Guardians themselves commit so thoroughly to their strange, misfit roles that even the characters who nearly 100 percent CGI come across more alive than the actual human players. Bradley Cooper’s biting, cocky, gun-happy depiction of Rocket will make the space raccoon everyone’s favorite character and Vin Diesel works wonders with the vocabulary-limited Groot, proving that a good actor really can make the most of the sparsest lines (“I am Groot.”). But it’s Chris Pratt as Peter Quill who keeps the ensemble centered, anchoring their wildly extreme personalities from spinning out of control. His innate charm and complete lack of mean-spiritedness turns what might have been an insufferable character into the movie’s most likable one, which probably explains how he manages to rally the Guardians at all. By opening the film with a goofy dance routine through an ancient alien temple, he proclaims the spirit of fun that carries you through the remaining two hours.