Firstly, I will judge this as a sequel. 1st movies that are 'introduction of premise' as well as 'putting the gang together' generally are much better vehicles for movie going experiences.

So this is the sequel. They didn't go the 'putting the gang back together' storyline like many sequels do (Ghostbusters II for example) which is a big plus. The introduction of Kurt Russell's character in 1980 was a nice touch. CGI was great on his face and he looked real to me (unlike Tron Legacy's anti-ageing CGI). Maybe they should have milked the 80s nostalgia a little more.

They then throw us right into the action with an escape sequence. I liked it, it was a great way to kickstart the movie. It did start to feel like a video game a little but it worked.

The sister-sister storyline of Gamora and Nebula was pretty good, and created a nice story-arch for both characters.

Now the low-point. The 'god-father' (little G as he says) and Star-lord storyline. Given that the movie is more or less constructed around it, I think it needed a serious rework. The planet and interior design looked like rejected conceptual art from a Thor movie.

If I was tasked with a rewrite, I would work on Quill's attachment to earth, the 80s, his mother, etc. One of those "I'll give you this for all eternity if you join me in doing this". It's an old device in storytelling, but it works like a charm. I would have made the planet a utopia of sorts that he has to see as just a mirage.

Groot was cute but I wished he stepped into some fertilizer and grew up for the finale. His growth could have been incorporated into saving the day.

As for Quill shooting up his dad because he gave his mother a tumor, I felt like it was too sudden of a change. And I felt that Ego's justification for the cancer was weak. Maybe if he did it to set Quill up for a lifetime of wanting the 80s and his mother than that would have been genius. "I had to take her away to make you the man you are today," something like that.

Drax's jokes were pretty good except for the continued joke about Mantis being ugly. It became a bit obnoxious after a while. Yeah, we get it, he is literal.

Rocket's story was a letdown because they tried to write an emotional storyline for him and I felt like we needed him to just be the crazy character who's there to shoot the place up! His final shot was him crying. We didn't need to see that.

Overal I think this movie was a B. It was entertaining but the 'god father' storyline was a bit too much of a stretch and if it had to go that way it could have been written better.