When people refer to cheese in a movie, I think it's blue cheese.  Blue cheese is one of those ingredients that is really easy to mess up.  A little too much and you've ruined the whole thing.  Too little, and it's not even noticeable.  Just right sets your tastebuds alive with perfectly balanced flavours.

Guardians of the Galaxy hits that perfect balance.

The story centers on Peter Quill, who was stolen from Earth as a kid.  He grew up among interstellar thieves, so is comfortable among all the strangeness of the various aliens.  Still, he clutches to his Terran past, by quoting 80's pop culture references and listening to the mix tape in his walkman over and over.  He even named his ship after his childhood crush, Alyssa Milano, from "Who's the Boss?"

That is why the cheese works so well in this movie.  It's sincere.  Instead of being pointed at and laughable for being so retro, this is who Peter is and he genuinely thinks it's cool.  The movie doesn't try to pretend that it is better than that stuff.  It embraces it.

Among the other "Guardians":

• Drax The Destroyer, played excellently by Dave Bautista.  Drax takes everything literally.  His race doesn't speak (nor understand) metaphors
  
• Rocket Raccoon.  A genetically engineered raccoon turned mechanical genius.
  
• Groot, wonderfully voiced by Vin Diesel.  His only vocabulary is "I am Groot", yet Vin manages to squeeze intent and emotion out of it.
  
• Gamora.  Green galactic bad a**
  

I didn't expect to like Rocket and Groot.  I expected them to be two dimensional caricatures of whatever makes them comic-fan favourites.  However, they actually were enjoyable, and I'd say Groot stole the show.

I was a little disappointed by Gamora though.  Like many bad-a** women of fiction, they're tough enough to kick you to next tuesday, but conveniently useless when the story needs them to be a damsel in distress.  That only happened twice though, and the rest of the time she's true to her character.

The Good: Excellent balance between action, sci-fi, humour, and cheese.
The Bad: Inconsistent Gamora bad-assery.
The Ugly: Karen Gillian's Nebula felt flat.  Her acting lacks genuine intensity and always feels like "acting" to me.

Guardians of the Galaxy is a fun movie.  There's not much to think about.  Just sit back and enjoy the ride.