RIYL: piña coladas and getting caught in the rain, smart-ass anthropomorphic raccoons, blue full-body paint, leather jackets, green full-body paint, laughing, grey full-body paint with red scar-toos all over, Han Solo crossed with the Rocketeer, 8-foot-tall tree men, cool gadgets, spacecraft, spacecraft battles, bright colors, clean future worlds, dingy future worlds, prison escapes, Chris Pratt, irreverence, The Fifth Element, Marvel Studios’ winning streak, fighting assassin sisters, Karen Gillan, Footloose, James Gunn, things being better than they should be, well-shot action sequences, weird space operas, pop hits of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, excellent comedic timing, rocket boots, glowing red eyes, incompatible people being drawn together by circumstance and forced to work together towards a common goal, video games, taking everything literally for humor’s sake, mixtapes, Zoe Saldana kicking ass, Dave Bautista being hilarious, Bradley Cooper voicing a 3-foot raccoon and stealing the show, cool-looking aliens both CGI and make-up, outlaws, Star Lords, David Bowie, nebulas, jokes, saving the galaxy, simple stories told well, deflated genre conventions, silliness, biomechanical body implants, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Rooker, crooked teeth, mentally controlled flying arrows, bioluminescence, giant war hammers, red full-body paint, Stan Lee cameos, badass evil villains, various bizarre contact lenses, explosions, lots of explosions, The Jackson 5, half-assed plans, surprising moments of earnest emotion, ruining those moments, comic books, space fantasies, troll dolls, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, space thugs, themes on the value of having and being part of a family, Raiders of the Lost Ark, making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape, Vin Diesel saying only “I am Groot” repeatedly, purple stones with the power to destroy a planet, John C. Reilly, metal mohawks, stealing someone’s prosthetic leg, big guns, ’80s-style adventure made with today’s technology, a dog in an astronaut suit, bad motivational speeches, montages of heroes arming themselves, the wind-up middle-finger move, dashboard decorations, inept authority figures, not taking yourself too seriously, having fun, dancing trees, knife fights, boss battles, the bait-and-switch, whistling, spaceships that look like bugs, the name Rocket Raccoon, Slither, Walkman cassette players, justice, Carmen’s salsa, things that are good.
