Guardians of the Galaxy review

There’s something delightfully familiar about The Guardians of the Galaxy - that wacky combination of humour and action within a setting that feels dense.

Marvel’s newest outing opts to expand the universe, showing the audience that there’s more than just the Asguardians, frost giants and giant purple men in gold armour running around space.

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) was abducted from Earth by a bunch of space pirates when he was just a kid.

While the story of a young boy growing up on a spaceship full of mercenaries and discovering a weird, wonderful universe would be an entertaining one, the film decides to pick up 25 years later.

"Ooooooooooooooooooooooooo." Star-Lord, 2014

Peter is now a womanising pirate calling himself Star-Lord, with only a mixtape and a Walkman to remind him of Earth.

One day when working a job to retrieve a seemingly innocuous sphere, he discovers said sphere is desired by a fanatical alien warlord called Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), who is looking to destroy a peaceful planet.

No.

Naturally his first thought is to sell the sphere to the highest bidder.

Yeah, he’s a class act.

The actual villain of the piece, stopping for some hammer time. 

Along the way he joins up with bounty hunters Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) who are a genetically modified raccoon and a plant creature thing, green-skinned assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and family man Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista).

The film is a fantastic romp that takes the nominal heroes on a tour of the wacky galaxy that includes stops in an interstellar prison and a mining colony in the head of a giant alien.

"Prison yellow" is such a flattering colour.

Guardians of the Galaxy has that great pulpy feel to it - full of characters whose names include the word "the," and preposterously-named locations.

Because the setting is so densely populated it can be easy to get slightly lost, especially if you aren't familiar with the source material, but everything ties together in the end with a few key elements.

Karen Gillan. Not pictured: Doctor Who.

The film is reminiscent of the first Iron Man in that a lot of the characters feel like characters with backgrounds and relationships, rather than cardboard cut-outs.

The humour also comes thick and fast, regardless of whether the scene is a romantic encounter or the middle of an action sequence.

There's a talking raccoon, how can it NOT be funny?

Chris Pratt is a solid lead, bringing a bungling frat boy charm that echoes Farscape's John Crichton's hapless adventures in a similar setting.

The supporting cast is also fantastic, with Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel putting in admirable efforts - despite Diesel working with only variations of the same line.

He is Groot.

Zoe Saldana and Karen Gillan are excellent as the rage-fuelled sisters Gamora and Nebula, showing a lot of pain and anguish that comes from having a literally tortured past.

Ok, now kiss.

But it's Dave Bautista's literal-minded bruiser that really steals the show. No matter what is going on around him, Drax always has the audience watching to see what he does next.

The soundtrack is just as much a part of the Guardians of the Galaxy as any of characters, and the funky 70s and 80s tunes really contribute to the feeling of bygone adventure films.

Hilarious.

The Guardians of the Galaxy is a great romp, full of space pirates, space politics, space jail, space cyborgs and space Michael Rooker.

Look, it's space Michael Rooker. He's also blue.

Highly recommended. 

He's a Staaaaaaar-Looooooord waiting in the sky...