Guardians of the Galaxy, Movie Review

Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Stars

Guardians of the Galaxy had an incredible opening last weekend, blowing August records with a $94 million domestic gross, and a 92% Fresh Tomato rating at RottenTomatoes.com.  The fresh tomato rating is right up there with the original Iron Man at 93% certified fresh and Marvel's The Avengers which also boasts a 92% fresh tomato rating.

Guardians is in very good company.

News broke a couple years ago that Marvel would be adapting Guardians of the Galaxy into a feature film.  It seems right, with the success of Thor, and I love a good space flick, but when details about this lesser known Marvel franchise began to circulate, I was a little nervous about the future of Marvel.  A talking raccoon?  Seriously!!??  Guardians was going to either be amazing or a flat out disaster.

This new Marvel film is an amazing, fantastic fun.

Pater Quill, aka Star Lord, played by Chris Pratt, was abducted by aliens at a tender young age.  His only ties to Earth are a couple nick-knacks and an "Awesome Mix Vol. 1" cassette tape, which was compiled by his Mother and covers great tunes from the 70s and early 80s.  It's these tunes that make up the movie score, humanizing Quill, letting us know he's like us, only he gets to romp around space, getting into all sorts of fun trouble.

And amidst all this fun trouble he meets Gamora, a green Zoe Saldana , the alien Drax (Dave Bautista), a walking tree names Groot with an incredibly short vocabulary (Vin Diesel)--"I am Groot" can mean so many things--, and the talking, fighting machine known as Rocket the Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper).

In terms of Space Opera's and adventures, we've seen great imaginings through Star Wars and Star Trek, Star Gate, Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica.  All really fun, interesting takes on what life beyond our own could be like.  Guardians of the Galaxy offers a new take, keeping it fresh with different colored aliens (green, pink, blue, etc) and incredible planets.  The planet where we first meet Star Lord is quite intriguing: The home of a past advanced society, forced to leave due to unstable geysers and other cool geological forces. The visuals and technology spectacular.

The acting is great, though I wish some of the characters weren't so two-dimensional.  The villain Ronan, played by the incredibly talented Lee Pace, felt a little flat.  I don't blame Pace's performance, but rather the writing.  The funny thing is, I felt, out of all the characters, Rocket the Raccoon was the most three-dimensional!  I really felt for the little guy.  I was prepared to be annoyed by Groot, the tree, but was surprised when I ended up loving the character instead.

Guardians of the Galaxy is pure fun.  A great capstone for the Summer movie rush.

Buy a big bag of popcorn and prepare to laugh!

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.

(As a note to the rating, there is a lot of fowl language, more so then other Marvel films.  The bit in the trailer where Peter Quill slowly "flips the bird" and it's blurred out?  It's not blurred in the movie, and lasts for several seconds.)

The Lego Movie: Movie Review

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

"Everything is awesome!

  Everything is cool when your part of a team.
Everything is awesome!

When we're living our dream."

Honestly, I'm surprised they haven't made The Lego Movie sooner.

Lego has become a staple in the video game world with titles such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings to name a few, each known for their fun game play and quirky humor.  They're fantastic.  So when I found out there was going to be a movie, and could tell through the trailers that the Lego humor was there, I knew this movie was going to be a winner.

It is a Winner.  A winner full of Awesomeness.

Emmet (Chris Pratt) is your typical go lucky guy.  He's an excellent enthusiast, but that's just about it.  No original thought in that brain of his.  Common and ordinary, only he's the key part of a prophesy given years earlier by the wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman).  It's said Emmet's the great Master Builder who will overthrow Lord Business (Will Ferrell).  Now Emmet's along for the ride, eagerly ready to prove he's extraordinary.

Cameos abound in The Lego Movie.  There's the obvious D.C. super hero's, complete with hilarious inside jokes, Abe Lincoln, Shaq, etc, etc, etc . . . bounteous et ceteras, some of which I will not name for the shear fun of the surprise.  This movie finds a way to blend all these cameos together, and not once does this film fill overcrowded.  It just seems so natural seeing all these characters together.

And the animation is brilliant.  I thought it was stop motion animation, but then I read somewhere that it's computer generated.  I just don't know!  But the look it fun, clean, colorful, and full of sight gags.  I didn't want to blink once--sadly impossible--so much is onscreen.

There seems to be a political message embedded within the film.  The WALL-E of this decade?  With a villain named Lord Business/President Business it's easy to draw a few conclusions.  And there's an outside society that seems very Libertarian.  I'm not going to get into all that.  I found the message of the movie, by movie's end, to be quite inspiring.  And I theorized, could be totally wrong here, that the name "Business" could come in part from the saying: "Mind your business."  By films end you can find your own meaning.  There's so much that can be taken from this film.

Overall I found The Lego Movie to be a lot of fun.  Clever.  Family friendly.  I saw it in 2D, and I want to see it again in 3D, which could be a blast.

Now I want to play with Lego's.

MPAA: Rated PG for mild action and rude humor.