After watching Iron Man 3, I was incredibly excited to see Guardians of the Galaxy and see how it ties in the Marvel universe. Sadly, I was greeted with incredible disappointment and also extreme confusion by the entire movie experience. Thus, this is my review of the latest failure of Marvel cinematics. Guardians of the Galaxy.

First of all, Guardians of the Galaxy, features four protagonists in a mindless action-adventure romp through time and and space? Sound familiar? Let's revisit the early 1990s classic, Saving Private Ryan(featuring Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, and Matt Damn). As I watched this film, I remarked to myself, they might as well have named this film Saving Private Ryan Part Deux: Guardians of the Galaxy. The characters are the same, both are set in space, and both have a non-linear plotline. But Saving Private Ryan did it much better. Much better.

Let's start with the plot.

SPOILERS

First, we're greeted with the traditional Stan Lee voice-over of exposition. "Great war. Secret Power. Evil Monsters. Yada yada. Heroes." before we're introduced to our stereotypical white male lead character, Star-Lord, played by Chris Pratt of How I Met Your Mother.

How are we introduced to our hero, Star-Lord? Well, by him robbing a interstellar bank of course. Turns out, the bank heist is a set-up by his mother and he's arrested and sent to space jail.

In space jail, we meet two of our other Guardians of the Galaxy; Racket the Raccoon and Grout(an apparent pokemon since he only says his name the entire movie), voiced by Vin Disel(also in Saving Private Ryan) . The three share a jail cell which begins the ongoing joke throughout the entire movie, Racket's body odor(raccoons stink, get it? GET IT?).

The space jail scene is incredibly short-lived and presented as an obvious plot-tool for our three Guardians to meet as the three Guardians break free when an explosion from another attempted jailbreak knocks a hole in their cell wall. What about the other inmates? Who started the explosion? We never know. The immediate next scene is simply our three protagonists walking around a phoned-in futuristic planet populated with only white people and fast-food chains such as Carl Jr's and Arby's, typical.

Understandably upset at his mother, Space-Lord seeks to find an answer to why his mother would purposefully set him up. His first stop is a futuristic Apple store(product placement). Why is a Apple store located on a planet in a complete different galaxy? Why are prison escapees walking through crowded streets without any security force taking notice? These questions are never answered.

Inside the Apple store, we meet our fourth Guardian, Gomara, a green space princess who recognizes Star-Man and initiates a quick hand-to-hand battle which moves from within the Apple store to outside in the streets. The battle ends when Star-Lord begins drowning/choking Gomara in a nearby fountain. He learns that she was hired by his mother so he forces her to bring him, Racket, and Grout to his mother by using her space ship. She agrees.

After a forced romance scene between Star-Lord and Gomara aboard the ship, interrupted by Racket clogging the ship's toilet, the space ship crashes in this galaxy's equivalent of Detroit. Somehow this also happens to be location of Star Lord's mother. Since the film was approaching the 2 hour and 10 minute mark. This part of the film was understandably rushed.

The now four Guardians of the Galaxy begin fighting Star Lord's mom(an apparent space vampire) in a horribly choreographed fight filmed entirely in bullet-time. There is a predictable sentimental moment where Racket apparently dies which is ruined immediately by a post-mortem flatulence joke.

Star-Lord's mom is eventually trapped in frozen ice after being knocked out of the space ship and tells Star-Lord that his Dad is Tony Stark before succumbing to death. With this news, Star-Lord, Grout, and Gomara head to Earth to find "answers". Answers to what? We never find out. The ending scene is the three of our heros in the cockpit of the space craft when Gomara says, "What's that smell?" insuiating that Racket is still alive, I guess? The David Bowie song, "Modern Love" plays and the end credits begin.

I actually stayed after all the credits to see if there would be any teasers for the next Iron Man movie. This much awaited post-credits scene was Robert Downey Jr. playing an apparent arcade version of the Sega Genesis game, Earthworm Jim, before turning around toward the camera and saying, "I'm all out of quarters.".

The entire movie was a complete disappointment. The plot was rushed and at points I felt like the writers had no real direction. The acting wasn't bad, except the CGI raccoon, Racket's lips were horribly out of sync with the audio, looking like a badly dubbed Japanese film(sometimes the mouth didn't move at all). The effects and environments were decent which is to be expected of a Peter Jackson film, but the laugh track wasn't necessary.

Some of the scenes seemed incredibly dragged out such as the when the Guardians are flying throughout space to the soundtrack of the Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" and immediately four seconds after the song ends, the song "Sex Is On Fire" starts to play. Honestly, did we really need two Kings of Leon songs back-to-back in this film? And this isn't merely background music.

The humor is crude at points. Especially so in the bathroom scene where Star-Lord, Grout, and Racket are all using adjacent urinals and apparently sizing up one another. Suddenly, Gomara walks in(she's female, what is she doing in the men's restroom?) and she walks up to the urinal and an apparent zipper sound effect is made while the three other Guardians gasps and Grout comically faints. The scene wasn't necessary and strangely disturbing. There was also plenty of poop and fart jokes from the Raccoon character.

There were multiple major continuity errors such as: the Star-Lord's mom fight begins on the planet they crash landed on and ends with her crashing out of the space ship into deep space. It never resolves as to how they got back into the space ship and into space. Grout gets impaled on a horse saddle(don't ask) but is apparently fine in the ending scene. Also Grout and Racket never appear in the fight between Star Lord and Gomara in the Apple store.

Overall I give the film a 7/10.