As a kid, I read a lot of Marvel comics. Marvel characters became as much a part of my reality as Santa Claus and my brother. But I am going to confess that I have never read a “Guardians of the Galaxy” comic. That means that I will only be reviewing the movie, which is the way it should be. I have always said that movies based on books or comic book series should stand alone and not force the viewer to have to go back and read volumes of material just to know what is going on.

Right off the bat, I will say that Guardians of the Galaxy is a helluva lot of fun. I must be getting old because I found it really difficult to keep up with what was going on in spots. Things were going so fast that I had no idea who I was cheering for or what I was waiting to see happen. When something did happen, I really had no idea if it was good or bad. But that does not take away from the pure fun that this movie is to watch.

If you know nothing about the Guardians of the Galaxy (as I did not) then you will probably spend a great deal of the movie waiting for the actual guardians to show up and save the day. For the first hour of the movie I was getting anxious to get introduced to the real guardians and then watch them fly into action. But as the movie wore on, it became obvious who the guardians were and that was a revelation that added to the fun of the movie for me.

Another indicator that I am getting old, and that years of performing loud music without properly protecting my ears was taking its toll, occurred in the very first scene. There is a lot of whispering going on and a lot of garbled conversation. Unfortunately, I missed all of it. I turned up the sound and even leaned a little closer to the speaker in my car, but I just could not make out what was going on. The sad part is that the opening scene reveals several important points that come up later in the movie, so do your best to pay attention and get all of you can from that scene.

This was a typical Marvel movie, and I mean that in a good way. The action was easy to follow (even if it was hard to understand exactly what was going on) and the dialogue was both intense and witty. The look of the movie was done very well, from the large Nova city to all of the ships. The Dark Aster is the bad guy’s ship and that thing looks extremely cool. In short, this movie is a ton of fun to watch and it is done extremely well. It even has the obligatory Stan Lee cameo that all of us Marvel fans look for in these movies.

Just from watching the movie, you can tell that Guardians of the Galaxy is obviously the first movie in a series. According to Marvel, this movie is the start of a new series of Marvel movies that will cross over with Avenger movies and God knows what else. Marvel has effectively created one of the most incredible sets of movie franchises in movie history and fans such as myself hope that Marvel never stops making movies.

Now the bad stuff. The big bad guy in this movie is a guy named Thanos and he has a psycho bad guy named Ronan working for him. We are supposed to be impressed with the power of Thanos, but we are not. It actually does not take much for Ronan to figure out how to get the upper-hand on Thanos and Thanos appears powerless to stop Ronan.

The other problem is that Ronan almost ruins the movie. I won’t give it away, but the end of the movie features a scene with Ronan trying to play the destroyer of a planet and he just comes off as a badly conceived Three Stooges villain. The end of the movie is supposed to be goofy and, in many ways, it is effective and funny. But it ultimately reduces Ronan to a caricature of what he was earlier in the movie and if the scene had gone on just another minute or two longer, or if the hero Quinn decided to act even more like an idiot with Ronan doing nothing about it, then it would have ruined the whole thing. For a big budget movie that is based primarily on visuals, the ending is extremely disappointing.

But that does not stop Guardians of the Galaxy from being a fun movie to watch and the perfect drive-in movie. This movie is the perfect duration and it is filled with incredible visual and audio effects. Parents and kids will like this movie and that is all you can really ask for from a drive-in movie.

Rating: 3 out of 5

George N Root III is a movie fanatic and a loyal patron of drive-in theaters. See what all of the fuss is about by checking out the drive-in for yourself this weekend.

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