GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3

The social vibe on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 was good; sitting in the cinema on a rainy London afternoon seemed like a win-win option.
The film opens with the backstory of Rocket, the racoon, and how he fell into the hands of a mad scientist called the High Evolutionary. Chukwudi iwuji plays the bad guy bent on animal testing, where eugenics meets vivisection to create THE perfect race. Rocket escapes but not without cost to his animal-test friends who are killed. Cue the first of one too many big-close-ups on racoon eyes while amping up the slushy soundtrack. Enter Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) dumb but gold-dipped, who is sent to recapture Rocket, apparently the High Evolutionary’s only successful experiment nigh on 70 years.
Star Lord/ex Ravager, Quills, (Chris Pratt) and the GOTG-gang are now living in Knowhere, where the writing team were up all night adding a K to ‘nowhere’; however, his dead lover, grouchy, green Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) reappears in this variant universe giving Quill plenty of excuses to sulk. (Hats off to Pratt for keeping a straight face.)
The addition of a moronic dog in a spacesuit (Dog Laika of Sputnik 2?) only neither Russian, nor the right breed, fails to charm. What a shame! What missed potential for a new character?
In this tediously overworked plot with more (black) holes in it than socks, one predictable fight scene follows another, all peppered with flat jokes and lacklustre dialogue, delivered by characters who can barely string one (grammatically sound) sentence together. The height of the art of repartee being Mantis piping, “did I look Cool?”
The scene in which Rocket flatlines and has a near death experience where his dead otter-friend simpers, “there are the hands that made us and there are the hands that guide the hands,” had me eyeing up the EXIT sign with a growing sense of urgency.
The scriptwriters might want you to think that  the characters ‘evolve’ but do they? As guardians of the galaxy they’re all incredibly stupid – even the so-called High Evolutionary who has perfected a race of blond children who can solve quantum mechanics but who also can’t work out how to get out of a cage. Is it not disturbing that the heroes in so many  of the latest blockbusters are largely illiterate idiots? Just how many mythic figures can Marvel dumb down for its cinematic universe?
If you like kitschy shots of space ships, FX, cutesy-fake CGI animals and overpowering music that links the same old to the witless, then this film is for you. Writer/Director James Gunn’s efforts to pluck the heart-strings didn’t.
The first two films in this trilogy were inventive sci-fi romps, this tri was just trying. In space no one can hear you scream, not so the cinema auditorium!
No doubt GOTG and Marvel fans will be satisfied.
RATING:  HALF A RACOON BRAIN