Movie Nation

Marvel/Disney can crow and declare victory with “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” but for those who play the expectations game, they left a lot of money on the table this opening weekend.

Projections were that the picture, a sequel to a squealing-like-little-girls fangirl/fanboy friendly smash, might clear $500 million worldwide, and as much as $160 in the US.

I went to see another film Sat. AM, and when I came out, the Regal Winter Park 20 had changed virtually every mid-day screening to “Guardians.” No more showings of “Gifted,” “The Dinner,” etc until the evening. So whatever the screen count announced by the studio, it was low. Nobody missed this because of sell-outs or inconvenient show times. The excessive running time didn’t hurt it. Much.

The movie made a whopping $51 million Sat. after a $17 million Thursday night and a decent Friday.  So it’s not like word-of-mouth is pummeling it. Reviews were positive, if mostly a bit lukewarm in their enthusiasm. 

So it is coming in 10% below expectations in the US, a bit more overseas, according to the buzz.

“Fate of the Furious” crossed the $200 million barrier, “Boss Baby” is toddling along and should finish its run in the $175 range. 

“Norman,” one of two good Richard Gere movies top roll out wide this weekend (“The Dinner” is the other) is riding good reviews to a $1.8 million take. 

There are a lot of old standbys in New York “businessman” and “consultant” Norman Oppenheimer’s vocabulary.
“How can I help you?” he’ll plead, when what he’s really worried about is how you’ll help him.

He name-drops, shamelessly, with great exaggeration. “Very close friend,” he says of every mogul, tycoon, politico or shaker and mover he’s ever locked eyes with. “I’d be happy to put the two of you together.”

We never see him at home, never catch him in “the office.” Nor does anyone else. He’s got his earbuds in, his camel-hair coat covering a not-quite-stylish suit, hat and scarf. And he’s schlepping, kibbitzing, never-quite kvetching.

“Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer” gives us Richard Gere as we’ve never seen him — channeling Woody Allen, juggling lies and agendas like a latter day “Broadway Danny Rose,” more tragic than funny. He’s a fast-talking hustler decades past the age when he should be hustling like this. Norman is a glorious failure, a Willy Loman of the Israeli/New York Jewish power elite, always outside, “a drowning man trying to wave down an ocean liner.”

This schnook has his spiel, and he’s nothing if not persistent. The aide to a New York mogul (Dan Stevens of “Downton Abbey”), a shaker-and-mover (Josh Charles), an influential rabbi (Steve Buscemi) or his own well-connected but reluctant nephew-lawyer (Michael Sheen), he buttonholes one and all.

He picks his marks and stalks them. Every stalking that leads to a brief street-corner conversation is a “meeting,” every not-quite-chance contact “an old and dear friend,” every promise a not-nailed-down bluff, every lie with just enough truth in it to keep his nose from growing.

Yeah, he’ll remind you of Allen, and a certain politician dominating the TV news these days.

In Joseph Cedar’s film, Norman’s quest is divided into acts — “Act One: A Foot in the Door,” “Act Two: The Right Horse.” We experience Norman’s arm-twisting not-quite-charm, his disarming way of approaching a stranger he’s researched with “Let me HELP you,” promising meetings with the right people about the right deals, all of which he says he can facilitate. But can he?

“The Right Horse” turns out to be Misha, an Israeli cabinet official (Lior Ashkenazi) whom Norman figures can get him in the door with a Wall Street tycoon (Harris Yulin) whose assistant (Dan Stevens) is downright abusive in his dismissals. Norman spies his mark at an Israeli-American conference, works his magic, finds his angle and does the man a little kindness.

Years later, Mischa Eshel is prime minister, a swaggering idealist who big plans for saying “yes” to compromise and peace. And in a Washington receiving line in a reception for the new prime minister, Norman has his moment of vindication and his finest hour.

Nothing in writer-director Cedar’s Israeli filmography (“Footnote,” “Beaufort”) points to the art, craft and comical cunning of “The Moderate Rise.” Norman experiences a freeze-frame moment, embraced by the new prime minister in front of the press, members of Congress and every heavyweight New York Jew who ever brushed him off. His magnanimity, grabbing the big names that ignored him and making introductions to the PM, makes us see Norman as more a mensch (sweetheart of a human being) than a macher (fixer, facilitator). If just for a moment.

He is beyond being insulted, a little man who refuses to hold grudges. And if we haven’t before, we start to root for him. What does the prime minister want? To get his middling-student son into Harvard. What does Norman’s nephew want? The famous rabbi to marry him and his “converted” wife in the prestigious synagogue. What does the rabbi want? Millions to save his historic synagogue. What does the mogul want? Some bit of Israeli intervention in a deal he’s cooking up in Africa.

And so on. Norman, we see, is on the cusp of getting everybody what they want. If only they’d ALL return his calls when he needs them to.

Charlotte Gainsbourg plays an Israeli Embassy employee fascinated by Norman’s methods and “connections.” Hank Azaria shows up in the third act as an even less successful version of Norman himself, a poorly-dressed hustler whose shtick Norman is too numbed to acknowledge as his very own.

Cedar turns his satirist’s eye on an Anti-Semite’s wet dream, a Jewish world where connections are made just by virtue of ethnicity, creed and commitment to Mother Israel. All that’s missing, and missed, from this Manhattan Moebius Strip Marketplace are its media mouthpieces — The New York Times, The New Yorker and B’Nai B’rith Broadcasting (NPR). Cedar still manages to comment on the clannish culture with a jaundiced eye, and endorse it as he does.

Cedar pities this wannabe as he zeroes in on his biggest failing. It’s that others won’t openly acknowledge needy Norman’s contribution, take his call and let him get the wheels to turn more smoothly.

It’s startling to see how Gere physically shrinks in this role. The confidence and dash and hint of ruthlessness that have been career trademarks vanish in this smallest of “little” men. Cedar cleverly stages Norman’s approach to the future prime minister in near silence, through a store window, with Gere pantomiming the (literal) arm-twisting charm and instant fake bonhomie that is Norman’s stock-in trade. He’s just brilliant.

Cedar has given Gere his own “House of Cards” to move into, where the game analogies spin out as chess and, most tellingly, dominoes. Norman needs them to fall just so, and if they do, he will be a man to be reckoned with.

But the genius of “Norman” is that we know, and he must suspect himself, that even if that happens, even if his intentions are honorable, he’ll still be as small as ever, kleyntshik even. Once a klutz, always a klutz.

MPAA Rating: R for some language

Cast: Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Charlotte Gainsbourgh, Michael Sheen, Steve Buscemi, Dan Stevens, Hank Azaria, Harris Yulin

Credits: Written and directed by Joseph Cedar. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:58

“No good deed goes unpunished,” the old joke goes. And that certainly crosses the mind of Dr. Tom Seymour during the course of his interactions with young Ian.

Not when he’s pulling him out of the river where Tom (Josh Charles) and his wife Lauren (Julia Stiles) have just watched the young man (Avan Jogia) plunge in with the intention of drowning himself. But later, Tom starts to question Ian’s motives and everything else about “The Drowning.”

Pat Barker’s novel “Border Crossing” sets the table for director Bette Gordon’s psychological thriller, a lot of tension, mysterious back-stories, the occasional melodramatic touch, and just enough silky smooth menace. It lacks the fireworks or stunning revelations of an A-picture in this genre. But it works as a nice showcase for a cast that’s largely been relegated to small supporting roles these days.

Tom is a criminal psychologist, and it’s only when he visits the man he saved in the hospital that he realizes he didn’t know him as “Ian.” That’s a new name, issued by the court. Tom knew him and studied him as “Danny,” an 11 year old accused of murder a dozen years ago. Tom sent him away.

Back then, the kid was “exceptional and damaged,” something even his juvenile incarceration teachers noted — smart, an aspiring writer. And while New London’s Dr. Seymour may raise an eyebrow at the coincidence of it all , his lingering feelings of guilt — “Maybe I got it wrong” —  keep him from connecting the dots.

The kid’s probation officer (Tracie Thoms) is SURE he’s better, and her long working relationship with Tom lets her saddle him to Danny — again — to keep him from being thrown into prison. Danny turns the compassion screws himself. He’s very pretty and needy and persuasive.

“You’re the only person I can talk to about what happened…Can you AT LEAST help me get my life back on track?”

And that professional relationship means Tom doesn’t tell Lauren that the handsome charmer who keeps popping up where she is might be a murderous menace.

That’s one of a couple of “Yeah, right” moments in the script. Danny’s “life back on track” plea has an edge to it, a suggested threat. What did Tom do to put him behind bars? Will  Tom’s cop colleague (John C. McGinley) reveal some shortcut they took, some way they conspired to punish a kid who claims “I didn’t DO it?”

Meanwhile, Tom’s deteriorating relationship with his hip artist wife drifts from planning a pregnancy to something more damaged and tenuous. Tom’s character starts to show behind his buttoned-down persona.

Director Gordon (“Handsome Harry”) doesn’t hide her or her character’s cards well enough for all the possibilities to present themselves, and be verified or eliminated. Charles is stolidly in character throughout, always suggesting something Tom must be hiding, the under-used Stiles has too little to play. But Jogia (“Twisted” and TV’s “Victorious,” believe-it-or-not) has layers of charm, sex appeal and menace in this role.

The payoff isn’t the head-snapping shock that you’d hope, and the PG-13 nature of the treatment robs the picture of the violence and heat that might have lifted it. But “The Drowning” manages to chill and surprise just often enough to keep its head above water.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with PG-13 level violence and sexual situations

Cast: Josh Charles, Julia Stiles, Avan Jogia, Tracie Thoms, John C. McGinley

Credits:Directed by Bette Gordon, script by Stephen Molton, based on a Pat Barker novel. An Eagle Films release.

Running time: 1:35

We know it’s going to own May, maybe a chunk of June, depending on the pent-up “Let’s see if an alien actually pops out of somebody’s chest in ‘Alien’ this time” demand.

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is going to open huge — epic. The first was such a delight that the second can’t help but surpass it, right? Even if it is somewhat of a dispirited grind, still full of laughs, but not “giddy” the way the first film was. I watched a bit of FX’s helpful re-broadcast of it the other day to confirm what I thought in my review — that the new movie’s slow and downbeat and Pratt lost a lot of bounce from his step between films.

Box Office Mojo figures there are $158 million worth of tickets about to be bought for this Marvel Megahit this Cinco de Mayo weekend.

Box Office Mojo predicts $152 million.  As the film is opening on over 4300 screens, and it is in 3D on many of them, I wonder if they’re lowballing it. The first film was so adored, it earned over $17 million in Thursday night showings, surely there’s a $165 million weekend in it.

Meanwhile, speaking of Cinco de Mayo, this promises to be another big weekend for Eugenio Derbez’s limp little Hollywood comedy, “How to be a Latin Lover.” Aren’t Hispanic audiences a little bummed that it’s almost entirely in English, and a lot of the guy’s manic Mexican edge is rubbed off? Another $7 million for this one should put it over $20 million. It could actually challenge “Fate of the Furious” for second place ( anther $7-9 million expected).

The biggest worldwide hit ever produced by India, the action-fantasy sequel “Baahubali 2: The Conclusion,” should remain in the top ten even if it is still only on 400 or so screens.

“Furious” should clear the $200 million mark by dawn Saturday.

August used to be home to movies that weren’t quite muscular enough to hold their own against prime summer cinema competition.

Then “Signs” came along. And “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Blockbusters can break out of August as easily as most any other month, especially the films rolled out in the first weekend or two.

Stephen King’s batting average on the big screen isn’t exactly big league ready. “Shawshank,” “Shining,” “Stand By Me” and a lot of forgettable horror filler. But “The Dark Tower” is his most anticipated adaptation in eons. EONS.

That said, not having read the book, I’m not overwhelmed by this trailer or the set up depicted here. Kid swept into a world he’s only imagined, protected by gun-slinging Idris Elba from death-and-desctruction-dealing Matthew McConaughey.

Director isn’t a Major Brand. And…August.

Still, there’s enough here to keep your fingers crossed. Aug. 4.

I caught “The Circle” after the tepid heat of its weak opening weekend, after the first wave of overwhelmingly negative reviews. And I didn’t have to read those reviews to pick up on what turned people off to this ambitious, flawed effort from the talented director James Ponsoldt (“Off the Black,” “Smashed,” “The Spectacular Now”).

There are lapses in logic, conveniences in this adaptation of a Dave Eggers novel about a young customer service rep who becomes the ground-breaking public face of an Internet-eating, many-tentacled social media empire.

Come on, even if she looked and came off as the smart, cute and sensitive Emma Watson, that’s a promotion that no corporate culture would stand for, much less let out of its control.

Characters exist out of an inorganic expediency, and aren’t given their due as flesh and blood people caught in the maw of the no privacy age.

But damn it, there’s value here, laced all through this cautionary fable about the cult of “Information should be free,” that the world, and those who people it, shouldn’t have anything to hide, so “No Secrets Allowed.” It’s smarter than its Tomatometer suggests, than many critics are letting on.

Take the depiction of the culture Mae (Watson), a working class college grad with a crummy custumer service job with a local water company, plunges into.

The Circle is “the chaos of the web made simple.” It’s where you can interact with friends in all manner of ways, pay your bills, make your purchases, network and so on, one-stop shopping for all your Internet/social media needs.

And the campus where this vast “Circle” is set up is just as all-encompassing. It’s a vast playground, with all-consuming work schedules, seemingly benevolent day care and health care and employee concerts (Beck!), parties and social and self-help and support groups, where everything interpersonal is just a “metric.” It’s exactly the way we’ve been shown Google, Apple and Facebook are set up.

From the outside-the-box job interview questions — “Sushi or soylent?” “Joan Baez or Joan Crawford?” “Quality or Convenience?” — to the bubbly, overly-concerned, over-sharing/over-knowing YOUR business co-workers, there’s something very Big Brother about it all.

But since Big Brother, in this case, the CEO, is a friendly first-name-basis boss played by Mr. Every Decent American Tom Hanks, we figure Big Brother is a benevolent dictator.

So when the company knows entirely too much about Mae’s family  — her father (the late Bill Paxton) has multiple sclerosis and her mother (Glenne Headley) can’t afford the best treatment for him — Mae can only be mollified by the sudden, generous and life-saving gestures that her new employer makes to her and to her parents.

Still, we’ve seen the girl is a bit of a loner. She likes solitary trips, kayaking, and chose to distance herself from her down-to-Earth ex-boyfriend (Ellar Coltrane of “Boyhood”). The pill-popping, perky pal who got her the job (Karen Gillan, Nebula of “Guardians of the Galaxy”) may not acknowledge them, but Mae should be seeing warning signs. And laughing about the company’s plans to ingratiate itself more fully into global culture, to erode privacy further, is no way to impress the higher ups.

One of them (Patton Oswalt) at least, the Chief Operating Officer, has more than a hint of super-villain about him. And there’s something about Hanks’ creepy smile here that reminds one of Steve Jobs, or any number of famous Scientologists — a charming, disarming invitation to be on your guard.

Anyone addicted to social media (guilty) will get chills over each evolution of The Circle’s mission, each of them amounting to a mass surrender of more privacy, a mass abdication of more of democracy to a faceless, secretive for-profit corporation. They’re not subtle, and Eggers, in naming such transitions “SeeChange” and the like, tags this world at cultish, Scientology without the pyramid scheme.

John Boyega of the “Star Wars” franchise makes no impression as a mysterious colleague whose ties go back to the founding of the company, and who isn’t drinking the Kool-Aid any longer. Watson’s Mae isn’t the savviest character, and that would have flown in the face of our general impression of Harry Potter’s clever gal-pal, Hermione. Still, she’s had nude photos she shot on her phone and let into the cloud come out. We know even smart cookies, especially the young ones, are slow to awaken to the danger of all this destruction of privacy.

And there are moments that will burn in, that you might remember every time you log on. Cyber-stalking in real time, cameras everywhere, World Wide Web Witchhunts streaming for all to see and participate in is something we should all fear.

The comments/threatening emails assault facing anyone based on selective exposure on the web can be savage, cruel and wholly unjustified.

No, we haven’t abdicated all our rights and given up all our common sense, as the movie sometimes suggests. But in an era of voyeurism-inviting web celebrities, fake news disrupting the legitimate news cycle and organizations built on finding impartial truth, the paranoia underlined, high-lighted and foot-noted by an over-reaching satire like “The Circle” seems more unreasonably “reasonable” by the minute.

And the movie about this multi-front assault on our basic humanity, for all its weaknesses, is too important to skip.

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for a sexual situation, brief strong language and some thematic elements including drug use
Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Bill Paxton, Glenne Headley, Ellar Coltrane
Credits: Written and directed by James Ponsoldt, co-written by Dave Eggers, based on his novel. An STX release.
Running time:

“Sleight” is a prestidigitation thriller that lives up to its title only if you misspell it.

It’s a smart kid drug-dealer trying to “get out” tale, slight in its ambitions, blessed by a charming cast but sorely lacking the magic — sleight of hand and cinematic — to let it come off.

We meet Bashir, “Bo,” via phone message. He’s just lost his mother, and a favorite science teacher wants him to know he can still take that scholarship and make something out of his life.

Cut to a year later, and Bo (Jacob Latimore of “Collateral Beauty”) has taken another path. He’s raising his kid sister (Storm Reid) and supporting their LA lives by any means necessary.

That means street card tricks during the day. The guy is a magician, making playing cards pop up on the other side of a glass store window, levitating golden rings and quarters and moving metal chairs.

But at night, Bo makes his real cash, selling and delivering drugs for the handsome charmer Angelo (Dule Hill, in a stand-out turn).

One of the women Bo plays tricks for, Holly (Seychelle Gabriel) appreciates his charms. She’s model-thin and pretty, the sort of LA college kid who uses “hence” correctly in a sentence. But she serves cupcakes at a bakery, and there’s a darker back story for her, too.

Not that Bo shares his own, or reveals where his cell phone calls that interrupt their every date take him. Angelo is dragging him deeper and deeper into the business. And Bo’s youthful amorality aside (selling Molly and coke to one and all, including his young peers), Angelo’s charm doesn’t mean he can’t turn on the sadism when his business is threatened by interlopers.

So here’s what writer-director J.D. Dillard sets us up for with this Sundance film. Young lovers, looking to get out, a murderous business entanglement, a hustler with “special” skills that he’ll need to get out of the upcoming jam.

“Any one can do a trick,” Bo intones. “But doing something no one else is WILLING to do makes you a magician.”

The young cast holds our interest, even though young Miss Gabriel’s character has taken on a “vocal fry” that grates, like being trapped in a Kardashian cook-out.

Toss out the implausibility of the red-flagged romance (she should be a lot of more suspicious and judgmental), the fact that anybody who’s been to the movies will see where this wish-fulfillment fantasy with a drug-dealing/violent edge is going, and “Sleight” still trips up over its own plot devices.

Making metal float in thin air isn’t impossible. But it can’t be a golden ring or a zinc/nickel/copper quarter. Not with magnets, no sir.

And since we’re never really sold on the notion that Bo has something supernatural figured out, that’s an Achilles Heel for a weary, conventional movie that doesn’t need any more big flaws.

MPAA Rating:  R for language throughout, drug content and some violence
Cast:  Jacob Latimore, Seychelle Gabriel, Dulé Hill
Credits: Written and directed by J.D. Dillard.  A WWE Studios release.
Running time: 1:29

The surprise success of the middling but good-hearted and “immigrant” topical parenting comedy “Instructions Not Included” was enough to convince Hollywood that it should be in the Eugenio Derbez business, and quickly, before the 50something Mexican funnyman aged out of his audience.

So up pops another sleeper hit, “How to Be a Latin Lover,” a comedy tailor made for his timing, his physical comedy skills, if not his Spanish slanguage gifts. It’s promising in premise, but limply plotted, offering Derbez too few chances to cut loose even as he makes the most of a game and goofy Hollywood-supplied supporting cast.

Derbez, cast as Maximo, whose boyhood dream was to be a “kept” man, is amusingly ridiculous as a louche lover of the Latin variety — a gold-digger lucky enough to have found his sugar momma when he was in his 20s.

All Maximo was ever good at was modeling banana hammocks, delivering smoldering stares and unsubtle come-ons.

“Oh,” he purrs, exiting the pool. “Did I make you wet?” 

Twenty-five years later, he’s let himself go — just a little. And holding a mirror under the nose of Peggy (Renee Taylor, who was in the original version of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers”) hasn’t produced the desired death and inheritance. Spending her money on McClarens and Rolexes hasn’t lost its appeal.

Until she takes up with an even younger car salesman (Michael Cera, a hoot). Maximo is out on his banana-hammocked butt. Not even his fellow gold-digger (Rob Lowe, almost TOO perfectly cast) can help him out. Rich (Lowe) has his own problems, keeping the oversexed/over-financed/not-over-the-hill Millicent (Linda Lavin) happy.

So Maximo’s off to stay with his estranged, widowed sister, played with her usual verve by Salma Hayek. She’s raising a little boy (Raphael Alejandro) who is just getting interested in girls. And as one of those girls is the granddaughter of a most eligible rich widow (Raquel Welch), Maximo is ready to help the boy out.

The comedy comes from the inappropriate lessons the aged Lothario passes on to the lad — sexist, too mature for his tender (ten) years. How’s the kid in the sack?

“I’m GREAT in bed. I don’t pee, or anything…any more.”

And there are laughs in Maximo’s efforts to finance his pursuit of the Widow Welch.

Stand-out moments — Derbez, as Maximo, teaching the kid to “take charge” with his simmering eye contact, to walk with a sexual strut and confidence. Maximo’s attempts to raise cash put him in a mismatch with a master street-corner sign spinner, run him afoul of some car-wrapping sales hustlers (Rob Riggle, Rob Huebel) and the widow’s protective chauffeur (Rob Corddry).

Best of all the many “Robs” Derbez surrounded himself with is Lowe, who throws himself into the kept-man routine, selling every sell-out line as if it’s his own. Rich exercises and um, bleaches, to please his lady-keeper. “Gotta keep it white and tight.”

Kristen Bell earns grins as a frozen yogurt clerk covered in a different set of band-aids every day. Because she’s a cat hoarder. And “even if they hurt you,” you love them. There’s a lesson for pet ownership, family and lovers. Or so the movie says.

Actor turned director Ken Marino leaves a lot of cuttable moments in, and generally lets things drag, from the childhood prologue to the too-pat finale. He pays too much attention to the supporting roles.

Derbez, saddled with a script mostly in English, has too few moments of his own to score. Watch him light up when he gets into Spanish tiffs with Hayek, who sings and dances in her small role, and you see what’s missing. He’s funnier in his native tongue, restrained and constrained in English.

That’s the risk taken by “How to be a Latin Lover,” a justifiable but misguided gamble to make Derbez an English language cross-over star. If you’ve ever seen any of his comedies from South of the Border, you know he’s funnier than this. So does the entire audience showing up for “Latin Lover.” Most of that audience speaks Spanish, and must be disappointed to see this close-but-no-cigar effort in its least amusing form — without subtitles for the Gringos.

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for crude humor, sexual references and gestures, and for brief nudity
Cast” Eugenio Derbez, Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe, Kristen Bell, Raquel Welch, Linda Lavin, Rob Corddry, Micheal Cera
Credits: Directed by Ken Marino, written by Chris Spain, Jon Zack. A Pantelion release.
Running time: 1:55

It takes a village to raise Baby Groot.

There are worse things that you could call a trigger-happy/tech savvy ill-tempered talking raccoon than “raccoon.” “Trash panda,” for instance. “Triangle-headed dog.”

Sly Stallone doesn’t do alien makeup, because he’s Sly Stallone.

Stan Lee isn’t done doing Marvel Movie cameos after all.

And having a dad named “Ego” is your first tip that a father-son game-of-catch was all you missed growing up without a dad.

Just some of what we further learn about the misfit mercenaries, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” in their second movie — an eye-popping, wise-cracking body-count packing high end sequel to the big Marvel hit of a few summers back.

“Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2” takes a “More is better” approach to the lighthearted, zap-zinger-and kill-shot action comedy that so tickled us way back when. It’s two hours and 20 minutes, plus endless “teasers” stuffed into the closing credits, and purpose-built to please fans of the franchise, the genre and ’70s and ’80s pop.

“‘Brandy, by Looking Glass. One of the great songs of Planet Earth. Perhaps the greatest.”

But all this excess has its price. What flipped by as a funny, big-budget whimsy before takes on gravitas — daddy issues, intimacy issues, trust issues. The first film achieved giddy, every now and then. This one? Pro forma, by the book, funny every so often — but flat.

It takes on new actors. And its longuers let us see that star Chris Pratt has a way with one liners, and little else in his acting quiver. The story has a first-sequel creakiness, as if Marvel and James Gunn are more hell-bent on setting up the next sequels (stay through the credits) than in delivering maximum fun/maximum impact with the movie at hand.

At least, when all else fails, there’s Baby Groot — dancing to “Mister Blue Sky” as the other Guardians — Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Drax (Dave Bautista), Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and the human, Star Lord, Peter Quill (Pratt) — endure all manner of mayhem, stopping, mid-brawl, to hand off the “baby” or otherwise see to it that he’s safe in between all the shooting, knife-fighting and swordplay.

This exceptionally cool alien race, the Sovereign, have hired our mercenaries to save some very special batteries for them from a monster. And darned if the Guardians don’t steal the batteries from the tall, haughty, golden-skinned High Priestess Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki of TV’s “The Night Manager”). The reasoning?

“They’re douches.”

It’s a favorite value-judgement of the Guardians. Along with disparaging remarks, from the ulfiltered lug Drax about “Earthers having ISSUES” and the rogue/con-rtist Peter’s unsuitability for mating with the otherworldy warrior Gamora.

“You just need to find a woman who is pathetic, like you.”

The Sovereign are all about remote-controlled Future War, hunting the Guardians by drone which wear video screen images of the remote pilots seeking to get their batteries and bring the Guardians to Sovereign justice.

There’s still money to be made by the space pirates, Ravagers, in taking out the Guardians. They’re led by the malevolent moron Yondu, played in blue makeup by the great Michael Rooker.

But all this chasing about is what brings the Guardians into contact with the man that impregnated Peter’s mom all those decades ago — back in 1980. The aptly-named Ego is played by a perfectly cast Kurt Russell, who had the same flippant way with a one-liner that Pratt has perfected.

Kurt, of course, is the whole package, and Pratt is never more a One-Trick-Pony than when he’s forced to raise his game in a scene with a more accomplished actor. Rooker, Russell and especially Saldana act rings around him in every shared scene.

He appears bulkier this time out, more a function of his performance than actual weight gain, giving us a lot less reckless abandon when you know all he’s doing is sitting in a partial-set cockpit “acting” a chase spaceship dogfight in front of a green screen. Pratt is wearing the weight of the franchise, literally, in every scene.

And it’s noticeable because the movie has pacing problems that through his acting into sharp relief. The slack stretches have some amusing taunting from Rocket the Raccoon, giving an ill-named captor pirate the business.

The vast collection of motley space murderers is straight out of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” a death scene seems only necessary to accommodate future casting (and smacks of the first “Star Trek” film franchise).

But heck, what else is there to say about a movie that includes, and earns thrilled hooting from the fans, a cameo by comic book anti-hero Howard the Duck, featured in one of the greatest ’80s bombs of all?

Go for the exotic alienness of it all — well, save for Stallone, who has trouble getting his mouth around all these alien locales, races and surnames. The alien empath Mantis is a sexy-weird invention, with the beautiful Pom Klementieff rendered almost unrecognizable as human underneath antenna and wild, buckeye-sized eyes. Drax eats something that glows in his soup bowl, and every creature, skyline, sunset and moonrise (half a dozen moons over one planet) is just as other-worldly as you’d hope.

And franchise-film veteran Saldana, slinging a sword like it’s not her first hack-off, working out her sibling issues with the psychotic rager Nebula (Karen Gillan, no match for Saldana in the clenches), reminds us it’s Gamora’s universe and Saldana’s movie. Especially when the rest of it lurches to a stop, as “Vol. 2” does, time and again.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language, and brief suggestive content
Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Kurt Russell, Dave Bautista, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Elizabeth Debicki, Sylvester Stallone
Credits: Directed by James Gunn, written by James Gunn, Dan Abnett . Marvel Studios/Disney release.
Running time: 2:19

Yeah, I’m getting around to the movie with the cursing raccoon tonight. But this AM, a combat film presents itself, an intimate portrait of an isolated, man-to-man, sharp-shooter to sniper fight to the death. Aaron Taylor Johnson and John Cena are among the stars of “The Wall.” It opens May 12.