Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2 is a strange movie for me. I really enjoyed it, but it's also a clear step down from the first one. On the comedy side: A lot of it worked, a lot of it didn't. At some point about mid way through, it really does feel like they're just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. That means there's a lot of a good stuff there (particularly from Drax and Mantis), but there are also some long winded jokes and wackiness that does not land. On the plus side it's definitely a more emotional movie, but because of the rapidfire style it's flying through a lot of these more personal story beats without giving them much time to breathe while also sacrificing that galactic scale of the first. Likewise, the villain is simultaneously one of the Marvel's best due to sheer screen presence, but also still a pretty flaccid exposition machine as a linchpin for the story. As an action movie it did nothing for me, and I didn't find anything here as natural and fun as the prison escape from the first one. The whole climax goes on forever and is just a big VFX explosion; I'm numb to it. Baby Groot is cute, but it feels like the movie KNOWS he's cute which kind of takes away from his cuteness as Gunn leans into Groot gags too often and for too long. Kurt Russell was fun, as always.
So idk. A lot of positives, and I can see why people love this- some even more than the first- because it doubles down on everything, but less of it landed for me this time. Part of that is a general fatigue of the MCU, part of that is the pacing being worse. Either way, this is not top tier MCU like Vol 1, unfortunately.
