"You need to find a woman who's pathetic, like you."

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 continues the hilarious adventures of the galaxy's most dysfunctional team. This film involves a deeper and more personal story than the previous instalment but trips over itself in trying to create an emotional connection. It has some dialogue problems but ends up being quite enjoyable.

This film is very enjoyable. It's story feels so much deeper but I failed to fully connect emotionally as it kept throwing jokes at me instead of letting the moment play out naturally. It was like they had to fill some sort of quip quota. The overall story is a lot more interesting than the first I found and I saw glimpses of a truly incredible film here. This could have easily been the best MCU movie had it not been for weak lines of dialogue, forced humour and inability to build a coherent emotional moment. It definitely doesn't have the effortless charm that the first movie had, but it is still quite enjoyable.

This stellar cast brings back everything I loved about them from the first movie and I thought they were quite good. As mentioned before, some poor writing made some scenes feel forced and quite fake, but i thought it improved towards the middle of the movie. The characters were interesting and every one of them had an arc with a strong theme of family which I thought worked well. Baby Groot was not as annoying as I thought he would be. He was funny and adorable, but there were moments where the movie really tried to force him in my face. Without spoilers I will say this was so close to having a good MCU villain. Their motivations were clear and engaging, but the third act seemed to throw that away and go for ridiculous and big action. Now that type of action is not a bad thing by any means, but the way they did it and the nature of the antagonist, it just seemed disappointing.

The glorious soundtrack is back and in true Guardians style it rocked. I enjoyed the songs and I think they fit very well with each scene, but it was definitely not as good as the first. The colourful style is still great and there were some pretty amazing shots all throughout the film.

Although it does not have the same charm as the first movie, it sticks to its style and it works. There are noticeable writing problems and common MCU flaws that severely holds back any emotional connection the movie tries to make, but it's still enjoyable. Big action and a renown cast bouncing off each other makes for a great time.

62/100

2017 Movie Ranking