Alright! Today I’m reviewing the 2nd Marvel Studios Special Presentation and its 40th (!) project overall, the spin-off/pseudo prequel/sequel to everyone’s favorite group of misfits known as the Guardians of the Galaxy, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which follows Mantis and Drax as they kidnap Kevin Bacon in an attempt to make Christmas great again.
First and foremost, this is my eighth review of an MCU product this year. The sheer quantity of these projects is beginning to outweigh the joy of watching them, which is especially true here. The Holiday Special is totally fine on its own, but when it’s just the latest in a long line of Disney+ content, it becomes the last slice of pie at Thanksgiving - you don’t really want to eat, but you’re already stuffed and there’s only one slice left, so why not? And then cue three hours of stomach aches from consuming so much food. So too is the MCU. I cannot bring myself to have something interesting to say about all of them. Some of them are just fine, nothing more, nothing less.
As for the actual quality of the special and not just a broad critique of everyone’s favorite cinematic universe that’s been going strong for fourteen years, The Holiday Special is completely fine. But that’s not good enough anymore, not when eight completely fine projects come out a year. You either need to be great or stop wasting everyone’s time and The Holiday Special, while short, is still a short waste of time. There's little to be said about it other than that it's an entertaining diversion for forty minutes, with little growth to be found in the characters, and little aside from a surprisingly catchy song in the first five minutes that leaves an impact.
The overly sappy mentality, plot device of kidnapping Kevin Bacon, and the post-Endgame prologue make it feel more like Fanfiction.net or AO3 material, but that’s neither here nor there. What is here is perfectly acceptable albeit unspecial, nothing more than a tiny blip in the vastness of the cinematic universe. While I do give it points for having the wacky James Gunn humor/heart combo, there’s not enough here on either of those fronts to make it spectacular, although there are at least two solid laughs/callbacks that I enjoyed.
It’s direct-to-DVD; it’s warm milk; it has a place and time, and that time was just once on the day of release and never to be thought about again, never mentioned again, and scrubbed from the banks of your mind as if it was slander against Big Brother. It would be fun to go on dwelling on the complete averageness of the project, but it has already overstayed its welcome on my keyboard, and thus I close with the wise words of a Witch: “You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice.”
Overall, I give The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special a 7/10. “Short and sweet but not particularly memorable, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special is a perfectly fine B+ Disney+ adventure."
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| “I understood that reference.” |
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