As if it were not enough to fish the wallets out of parents and their yapping children all-year round, Marvel is now taking aim, specifically, at Christmas. Sickening. To the credit of James Gunn and company, shiny baubles are more than enough to distract delinquents. This Christmas special is a blur and horrid range of tales from the awfully poor animated stylings of the video game Façade, the ill-forgotten puzzle simulator. Clearly, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special splashed most of its budget on another soundtrack that works on patching up an animated opening that is closer to Big Lez quality than anything releasable. Crunch time kills.
Reminiscence and duplication bleed into one another in a piece that feels like a live-action setlist of Marvel trivia. Made for and by those that believe a holiday special will be justice enough to add some thin layering of new costumes to peddle as merchandise. Unsurprisingly, that has worked. A forty-minute piece of unbearable, poor humour that sees cameo after cameo, from Cosmo the Russian space dog to Kevin Bacon, who is another victim of that horrid Gunn-themed cameo. “Introducing,” they say. As if it weren’t as obvious a joke as expected from that trailer segment, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special does come from the “twisted mind” of Gunn, whose work here is as typically broad and Americanised as the rest of his paltry offerings. This time, though, he snaps the neck of Christmas.
Charmless boredom sees Chris Pratt and company kidnap another 80s star because it worked so well for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 when David Hasselhoff showed up. Stretching that to a “Christmas mystery” with an awful original track opening the piece to a weightless, dull special, is the last nail in a slim coffin. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special will get a free pass for being light and fluffy. That is fair, but that same light fluff is not just rightly inconsequential, but completely bland in both design and concept. If light and fluffy moments are expected, then surely something grander or better written than this could come through. Instead, record scratch moments and horrible direction leave their mark time and time again, consequences of the machine-like momentum Marvel has and continues to hold onto. Much of the action holds Dave Bautista and Pom Klementieff hostage, as the two break and enter into the hearts and minds of a festive generation.
Bacon is the saving grace for The Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special, a man whose mere presence in anything from EE adverts to Cop Car improves the production tenfold. It is a shame such a memo was not passed to the scriptwriters or Gunn, whose consistency in being drab and dull is matched only by their need and desire to peddle comic book characters to an audience who would be just as happy with Marvel-tinted baubles being thrown back and forth in front of their eyes. Easy-to-please productions mean that there is leeway not just for quality but quantity. Expecting brief bouts of fun from this festive piece is a mistake to be made, as the Guardians cast prove they have nothing left in the tank, nothing that would inspire anything unique from a season meant to be jolly.
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