If the poster for "Guardians of the Galaxy" seems a bit like a parody of a space-opera movie — with its ray-gun firing hero, green-skinned Amazon, machine-gun toting space racoon and giant alien plant — well, that's because it is. Kind of.
Director James Gunn is best known for his film "Super," which was a rather hilarious and demented dismantling of the superhero genre. With "Guardians of the Galaxy," Gunn inherits a little-known Marvel Comics property — a bush-league versions "Avengers," basically — and attempts to have some fun with it. He's aiming to both make a mockery of "Star Wars"-style space operas and also deliver enough sci-fi spectacle to make any fanboy swoon. Remarkably, he succeeds, and "Guardians" is pure, silly fun. (It's even more remarkable considering Gunn's last film, the gross-out comedy "Movie 43," utterly bombed at the box office.)
It's all bit camp, really. The film is as comfortable with bad guys in the Sith Lord tradition, ranting in classic super-villain seriousness ("Xandar, your wretched peace treaty will not save you now, it is the tinder on which you shall burn!"), as it is with a hero who will suddenly start breakdancing to 1980s pop tunes. The film's big message is not the quasi-Eastern profundity of "the Force," but rather that its ragtag band of mercenary heroes must learn to, and I quote, "give a sh-t."