Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I’ve mentioned how our son tends to quietly babble and talk during movies, despite me being one of those boring old fuddy-duddies who wishes people would shush. I’ve become quite a bit less of a stick in the mud, I think, because our son has so much more fun watching movies than pretty much anybody else. So when the Nova Corps and the Ravagers have a ridiculously gorgeous mid-air shootout with all the gunships of Ronan the Accuser, who could grouse when the kid bellowed “THIS IS EPIC!!” Or a little while later, when Star-Lord starts his dance-off with Ronan and our kid shouted “What the– what the what?” Who could complain?

Guardians of the Galaxy may not be my pick for the best Marvel movie, but it’s certainly one of the most fun. Our son immediately and unsurprisingly hailed this one as his favorite. He liked Rocket best, of course, but he liked all of the heroic characters and he laughed all the way through the film.

As I’m a little short on time now, I’ll just breeze through and note that Guardians of the Galaxy, the tenth Marvel Universe film, was directed by James Gunn and introduced a mob of new characters and locations. It stars the incredibly likable Chris Pratt as the barely likable Star-Lord, Zoe Saldana as the assassin Gamora, and Dave Bautista as the hyper-literal Drax the Destroyer. They’re joined by former Doctor Who companion Karen Gillan as the cyborg Nebula, Glenn Close as an alien politician, the great character actor and comedian John C. Reilly as an overworked space cop, and the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel as the show-stealing Rocket and Groot. It’s huge fun, the music is mostly great, and that dance-off moment is fabulous.

Quibble: Seth Green does the voice of Howard the Duck in a post-credit moment. Howard’s creator, the great Steve Gerber, always said that Howard should sound like Burgess Meredith. That said, now that Wally Sidney owns Howard, is it absolutely necessary for him to continue wearing trousers?