Marvel Studios does it yet again

When the trailers first started streaming, I'm sure many folks asked, "Guardians of the Who? What?" And then there were those like me. I'm sure I'm not alone here. Somebody tell me I'm not alone here. I couldn't help being just a tad skeptical. They're making a Guardians of the Galaxy movie? Really? Um, that's weird, and, yeah, totally cool, but it's probably going to suck balls. Chris Pratt is Star-Lord? Yeah, it's going to suck balls.

But then I had to admit that first trailer was pretty damned awesome. I watched it over and over again. Then there were more trailers and more promos, and I had to wonder whether it was being overhyped and whether it could ever live up to that. It's pretty obvious, however, that Marvel Studios has found the perfect formula for a crowd-pleasing hit: lots of humor, lots of action, far-flung adventures, and lovable characters. Guardians of the Galaxy is stuffed full of all these ingredients and for good measure, they jumped up and down on the suitcase to pack in an awesome soundtrack too. It's the kind of the movie that really encourages the audience to get up and dance.

And you know what? It shouldn't even be shown in movie theaters. It should be shown in dance clubs, outside on Jumbotrons so people can get up and move when the urge strikes—and let me tell you, it will strike often while you're watching this one.

No, Guardians of the Galaxy isn't going to win any awards for being riveting drama. Much of what happens in the film feels frankly contrived. Oh, sure, the story about the death of Quill's mother is moving, and you can't help screaming inside at him to take her damned hand, dammit! Most of it is really just going through the motions, but you just can't help freaking loving it because the characters will break you down. I dare you to go into this one determined to hate any of them. Before it's over, you'll be buying all the plushies. You will, I'm telling you, you will. Had a really bad day at work? Just got fired? Go see Guardians of the Galaxy and you'll find yourself just knocking that dirt off your shoes.

Yes, it is mostly the characters that drive this one. While some of the sequences that attempt to build their personas might as well be bumper stickers, their unique personalities and interactions win you over with relative ease.

Chris Pratt is zany and absurdly charismatic as Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, the petty thief and smuggler who becomes the leader of the band of losers who earn the name Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah, they earned it. Ronan the Accuser himself coined the title. Yeah, that scene was just a hair's width on the side of contrived too, but what the hell.

I have to admit, Zoe Saldana looks pretty good as green-skinned Gamora. You know what they say about the green ones. No, no, I don't either. I was very impressed with the effects and make-up jobs. In most films like this, the skin colors usually look like they're painted on. In this case, suspension of disbelief is well secured. Dave Bautista makes for an appropriately intimidating Drax the Destroyer, although I remember him being more of a badass in the comic books. It's unfortunate that Groot doesn't really say much, but he's a pretty incredible character nonetheless. He's like a small Treebeard with a bad side. And I found myself really liking Michael Rooker as Yondu. No, Yondu didn't look like he does in the comics, but Rooker took the role and molded it to himself. I especially enjoyed the scene at the end where he smiles knowingly as if to say, "Good one!" 

We have to face a pretty simple fact here, folks. Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon positively steals the show. His cynicism and sarcasm drive the best laughs. Had I not seen the credits, I never would have known that was Cooper voicing the maniacal raccoon. And, really, he's kind of the brains of the operation. He's got that techie geek air about him—knows his way around gizmos, knows his way around a gun or two ... And as contrived as his backstory is, you can't help feeling for the poor little homicidal bastard.

The plot is barely thicker than the ticket stub, but this is one of the best feel-good movies you'll ever see. A bunch of misfits come together. They were trying to kidnap, kill, rob, etc., each other, but now they're great friends and they're going to save the galaxy from some crazy bastard with a big hammer. Dammit, I really, really wanted to see Thor cross hammers with Ronan. That ... that sounds kind of dirty. But, still. Great plot? Well, yeah, been there, done that, but it is a comic book movie, after all, and that's par for the course, right?

From start to finish, Guardians of the Galaxy is an enjoyable ride that you won't want to see end. The fact that it gives us all a better look at Thanos, tying it in with that other Marvel blockbuster, is another layer sugar-coma-inducing frosting.

Watch it for the humor, watch it for the soundtrack, watch it for the wonderful characters, but just watch it. Guardians of the Galaxy is one fun thrill ride of an adventure.

Ender's Game: Meh

I was going to write a full review of Ender's Game, but I don't feel much about it. It's a film with potential and good source material, but it just comes across as rather bland. The peaks and valleys one would expect to experience in terms of drama and emotional events are closer to a straight line in this one. The biggest fault with Ender's Game is that it lacks the patience to develop it's story and characters. In one dramatic moment an officer tells Ender he will never salute him; Ender insists that he will. It's only few minutes later that the officer is saluting him, and what ought to be a very dramatic and moving moment feels contrived.

And that's the way it is with the entire film. Every dramatic moment that ought to have an emotional impact on the audience is contrived and dull. Much of the plot is formulaic, and the climax generally follows the events of the book, but even the shocking revelation that comes at the end feels forced and carries no weight.

This is a story that requires more time to develop; it's just in too much of a hurry to get to the punchline.

In sum, Ender's Game is just disappointing and bland.

TV pick of the month, hell, the past year: The IT Crowd

Many a time when I was browsing my streaming services--primarily Netflix--I would stumble across the title "The IT Crowd" and never clicked the button because I just didn't think I'd be interested. I've worked in the software industry side-by-side with the "IT crowd" for over a decade now. Any "in" jokes about it would just seem stale and lame, I felt, especially since all of the end-user ignorance bit has been passé for years now.

So it wasn't until my daughter nudged me that I decided to give "The IT Crowd" a try. After all, I've been watching a lot British comedy and drama lately and finding it a good deal more satisfying than most of the American fare I've grown up with.

I was not disappointed. After the first episode I was hooked. "The IT Crowd" is one of the most outrageously hilarious comedies I've ever enjoyed. Richard Ayoade is a treat as the socially inept electronics genius Maurice Moss; Chris O'Dowd is a perfect fit as the perpetually disgruntled slacker Roy Trenneman; and Katherine Parkinson creates an empathetic figure in the hapless Jen Barber. They are the IT department at Reynholm Industries, a family-run business that does who knows what but seems to be important enough to attract Japanese partners.

The initial shtick is that Jen is hired to head the IT department though she knows nothing about computers. Roy and Moss know this and find a way to expose her--well, at least to themselves--but she continues to represent the ne'er-do-well department to the rest of the company.

The primary reason I resisted the show for so long was because I assumed it would be a litany of one IT or computer-related joke after another. Instead, it's more of the kind of madcap character comedy you see in programs like "Psych" or perhaps even "The Catherine Tate Show." Roy and Moss manage to get themselves into absurd predicaments that require complicated resolutions.

For example, in one episode Roy decides to use the restroom reserved for handicapped patrons because the wait was too long for the regular restroom. He gets caught and resorts to pretending to be disabled while Moss finds himself suddenly tending bar after he is mistaken for an employee of the establishment. Jen would surely feel she's the parent to a couple of grown-up ten-year-olds if not for her own mishaps.

The program is full of surprises. Just when you think you've seen just about every ludicrous thing that could happen in Reynholm Industries, the most head-slappingly preposterous will occur. I don't want to divulge too many details about this, lest you decide to give it a try, but one example is the discovery Jen makes about what lies behind a mysterious door in the IT offices. Let's just say there's more than servers in there.

My favorite episode is "The Work Outing" in which Jen, Roy and Moss go out to the theater. It was supposed to be Jen's date with a co-worker whose sexual orientation remains ambiguous or evasive and is a mystery Jen must solve. I will say no more about it, but it is decidedly the most hilarious TV I have enjoyed in a long, long time.

In another episode, Roy and Moss fall in with the wrong crowd when they decide to fake being sports fans after Moss finds a web site specifically for geeks that helps them make conversation with, well, "normal" folk. As you might imagine, it does not end well. It seldom does in this program.

It doesn't take long to fall in love with all of the characters in the show, even the unsavory ones like Douglas Reynholm. He's one of the most enjoyable scalawags ever to grace the small screen. Roy, Moss and Jen will quickly become like family. You cannot help but feel for them as the luckless but well-meaning IT department.

The most disappointing thing about "The IT Crowd" is that it only ran four full seasons. It came back for a farewell episode later, but that final episode is not yet available on streaming services--as far as I can tell, anyway, and I've been searching for it. It's over all too quickly for me. I want more. One day I'll find that elusive final episode, and that will, sadly, be that. Until then I may have to watch the whole series all over again. I cannot recommend "The IT Crowd" highly enough. No matter what kind of show you enjoy, you'll find "The IT Crowd" a laugh-out-loud experience.

Thor: The dark ring around my tub

Marvel Studios has come up with a solid formula to keep its film franchises chugging along as money-printing juggernauts bulldozing presidential portraits into their coffers. The formula calls for equal parts action, humor and romance. The "equal parts" statement could be arguable at this point. They found with the original Iron-Man (2008) that an ample dose of quips is good enough to make the audience forget about the nonsensical parts of any cinematic offering. The only problem is, formulas get tired. You can only go to the well so often before it just becomes lame and tired.

And that's how I'm starting to feel about it after being subjected to one hour and fifty-two minutes of one-liners, inanity and superhero beatdowns in "Thor: The Dark World" (2013). Alan Taylor's sequel to 2011's "Thor" is certainly a funny film and, at times at least, entertaining. The jokes, however, are becoming a bit predictable. If the current trend continues, my 12-year-old son will be coming up with better one-liners than "Thor 3" can offer.

But, really, that's not what bothers me most about "The Dark World." What bothers me most is that I cannot take any of it, not one ounce, with any level of seriousness. Most superhero films succeed because they allow you to immerse yourself in the fiction of the worlds they've created. You don't have to wonder how it is Thor flies or whether it's reasonable for a lightning-wielding demigod to be infatuated with a mere mortal down here in good old Midgard. When I first heard about plans to do the original Thor film, I thought it just wouldn't work. I frankly never much liked Thor as a Marvel superhero. I feared the movie would be lame and silly, but they made it work. The plot was tight and self contained. The romance between Thor and Jane seemed contrived and lacked chemistry, but the story worked and the action was satisfying.

In "The Dark World" we must accept the idea of dimension-jumping, spaceship-flying Dark Elves as a dire threat to Asgard and Earth. There's too much about the battle scenes--especially those involving the spacecraft--that just doesn't seem to fit. The whole bit about the ancient Dark Elf threat to Asgard is easy enough to swallow, but then it just gets weird. And they overcomplicate things with the world alignment business that will allow Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) to use the Aether as a weapon to destroy Asgard. The bigger problems arise back on Earth where scientists who run around with Galaxy Note-like devices try to explain what's happening in sciencey-sounding terms. I'm sure it all looks and sounds really cool--to third graders, but it's just plain insipid to anyone over the age of 12.

I'm honestly not sure whether it was supposed to be absurd or whether they thought it would be appropriate for comic book fare to not really make any sense. It felt almost as if the actors were ad-libbing the silliness that escaped their lips during the scenes in which they discussed the alignments and portals and vortexes.

Frankly, I had a lot of trouble caring about anything that happened in this film. At least in the first one I felt empathy for Thor when he was tossed out of Asgard and left to walk the mortal plane as a regular guy. In this sequel there's very little vested interest in the characters. Most of them are endearing and amusing, but it's hard to really make it work in less than two hours. If this were a TV sitcom, I'd grow to love some of the characters, including Darcy whose lines are often lame and contrived.

There's a YouTube joke about it involving Chris O'Dowd, who is underused and misused in this film, employing his standard line from "The IT Crowd." The YouTube parody is hilarious, but it also makes me think how much better this film would have been if it were itself a parody of Thor. It dances around that line enough that it would take but a slight breeze to push it over the edge. I could easily imagine seeing Richard Ayoade step into the scene with O'Dowd when Jane calls him on a cell phone from the other side of one of those portals. No, dammit, I am not making that up. It actually happens in the movie. Instead of Richard, O'Dowd should actually be playing Roy, and Moss's entrance into the film would have elicited nothing but floor-rumbling belly laughs from me.

At least then I could have said I thoroughly enjoyed the film. As it stands, I paid way too much money to purchase a digital title.