The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special Is Better Than Coal

The best thing about The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special is that it exists. OK, probably the best thing about it is the music and needle drops, something that is always top tier in a James Gunn property. But if you go into this expecting something as innovative as the only other Disney+ MCU special, Werewolf By Night, you will be disappointed.

Below is my spoiler-free review of the penultimate James Gunn work for Marvel Studios (until he inevitably runs as far from David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery as possible).

By spoiler-free, I mean that you have seen the commercials and trailers for the special — if not, then you probably want to stop reading here.

The premise of The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special is that the Guardians, particularly Mantis (Pom Klementieff) And Drax (Dave Bautista) want to give Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) a Christmas like he hasn’t had since he was taken from Earth as a child. To do so, they travel to Earth to kidnap Kevin Bacon, who they regard as some legendary hero based on Peter’s stories about his movie roles, and bring him to Peter as a gift.

Hanging the bulk of the story on Mantis and Drax is my biggest problem with the special. Drax is the same character he was written as in The Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 — no longer a somewhat clueless musclehead who only takes things literally, in that movie Drax is a bully and emotionally abuses Mantis under the guise of it being some form of humor. I hated that change in the writing of Drax as a character and I like that nobody else who used the character after that in any MCU movie wrote him that way.

Kevin Bacon as himself is the funniest thing by far in the first two acts, and it doesn’t become an overall fun and funny special until the third act when everyone is back together and dealing with the kidnapping. Nearly every actor aside from Bautista, Klementieff and Bacon seem to be phoning it in during their short appearances in the first act — particularly Pratt. But they really start to let loose in act three. Sean Gunn as Kraglin has some funny bits, but it is Karen Gillan as Nebula who brought out the biggest laughs, all from some very short bits or lines. Unlike actors who are mostly know for comic work, it was Gillan whose comic timing was impeccable.

One big reason to watch The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special is that it previews some lore changes or advances that will be part of the upcoming movie The Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. Some are minor and some are pretty big, but I won’t mention any of them because they would be spoilers, no matter how important or not they are.

Ultimately, I was disappointed overall with the special. It just wasn’t really that … special. Or consistently funny, or exciting, or touching. It has bits of all of those elements (almost all in the third act) but for me it was a slog getting though the first two acts for some of the quality character moments I was expecting, based on the first two movies. Brevity is one of the best things about the special. If it was any longer, my rating below would likely drop by a full point.

I give The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special (Marvel Studios; no rating but likely T for Teen; 42mins) a 3 out of 5.

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