If you don’t see any other movie this summer, you’ve got to see Guardians Of The Galaxy.

Why? Talking raccoon, that’s why. Talking tree, that’s why. Soundtrack that includes Hooked On A Feeling, the oogah-chagah version by Blue Swede. That’s why.

Full disclosure: The soundtrack also includes Escape (The Pina Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes, so you’ve got to weigh any revulsion you feel toward that one song, and I can only hope you are as nauseated by it as you should be, against your desire to see a fun summer movie. I can offer the consolation that a prick of a prison guard gets cold-cocked while he’s listening to the song I cannot mention a second time. So there’s that.

Okay. Back to Guardians Of The Galaxy. I don’t know where this came from. I used to read comic books (well duh) and back in the 80s there was a special edition comic book called Star-Lord, featuring a guy named Peter Quill, same as in this movie, but this movie and that comic book look nothing alike. I asked the Google if it could explain, but it could not; it could only show me comic book panels of a guy who was called Star Lord but didn’t look like the Star-Lord that I knew, or like the Star Lord in the movie.

I’m happy to forget about trying to figure it out. The movie, as it exists on its own, is a lot of fun. Star Lord is some kind of Han Solo/Indiana Jones hybrid who gets a bunch of space pirates (the talking raccoon, the talking tree, a walking five-hundred pound tattoo and a green-painted Zoe Saldana) to help him steal an orb from Ronin, a guy who can hit you so hard your unborn children will say “ouch.”  That’s all you need to know. You don’t need to know why the space pirates would help Star Lord, you don’t need to know what the orb is — it’s all just  background. Watching these guys chase Ronin across the galaxy for the fun of it is all you need. That, and you need to buy the soundtrack. They really want you to. I did. It’s good.