Peter Quill is feeling blue around the holidays, so Drax and Mantis decide to cheer him up by kidnapping Kevin Bacon from Earth. This movie is so much fun and embraces all of what makes Guardians of the Galaxy special and stand out from the rest of the stale, well-treaded superhero fare. It has a simple joyous quality about it, and Drax and Mantis remain my two favorite lovable weirdos at the heart of this franchise. It wedges nicely between Guardians 2 and 3 and provides a nice reprieve from the cynical Marvel machine which only serves to set-up future tentpoles. This is one that can easily be enjoyed without much foreknowledge of the MCU. I also like that they had fun building off the Star Wars Holiday Special, which this clearly pokes fun at with its animated Yondu flashback sequence. Enormously maudlin but oh-so-charming, it celebrates the humor and the characters at the heart of it. At a tightly-paced 40 minutes, it's the perfect length for this type of throwback Christmas special, which makes it easy to revisit year after year.
4½ swirly red-and-white curly men out of 5
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