The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special Review · 5:28pm Dec 10th, 2023
This special is just hilarious. 
The premise is simple, but it's also fun. Mantis catches Peter feeling down after the loss of Gamora and everything just getting worse around him, and so she and Drax set off to Earth to essentially kidnap Kevin Bacon and bring him back as a Christmas gift to cheer him up. You don't need anything more than that.
First off, the acting from everyone is solid as always, there's not one bad performance from any of the main actors to the background and minor actors, everyone does a solid job with their roles.
The special effects, are also pretty solid, even for a just a 45 minute holiday special, they still look great. I have no complaints about it, even if this came out in 2022 and people were noticing some drops in CGI quality in some of their stuff no thanks to the workers being overworked with little respect and pay, hopefully that's changed since then but it's hard to tell . Set design, costuming, makeup, all of that is still great.
Some of the songs are also fun, the one at the start is a lot of fun, and I died laughing the first time I watched it. The only way to make Christmas sound nightmarish, you give it to a bunch of aliens who heard about it through various vines of people. 
Though the biggest factor for this special, a lot of what makes this special work is definitely the interactions between the characters and the story they're in. James Gunn knows when to be serious and when to be hilarious, and this special is no different. As insane as Mantis and Drax may be, it's still sweet watching them to go this effort just to cheer Peter up for the holidays. And to be honest it's also refreshing seeing the MCU heroes not doing anything insane or heroic and seeing them more in a slice-of-life stuff with them going to Earth, I honestly love that.
Mantis and Drax having fun on Earth is some of the funniest shit, and watching them basically going on a bender while trying to find Kevin Bacon is just... so damn funny. 
Also I know this isn't important a detail... but as a Gobots fan, this is to me. First it is freaking hilarious watching Drax go to town on the poor Cy-Kill cosplayer, what did he do!? Second, he gets increasingly enraged with him when he sees him and Mantis says 'Gobots killed his cousin!'
... You're telling me GOBOTS EXIST!? THEY'RE REAL!? ... You're telling me out there, there's an entire planet of these characters and they are real, it's not just something Earth has? ... Marvel, give us that story! I wanna see the Gobots, they would be amazing! People crap on them too much, and I feel like they would be perfect to bring back, there's so much you can do with them. Transformers doesn't do a whole lot with them, why not do something big with them?
But aside from me going insane cause of seeing something I love come back briefly... This special is honestly perfect I can't really name any issue with it. It's heartwarming, it's sweet, it's funny, it's just a nice, solid, holiday special from the MCU and I love it. If you have access to it, give it a watch, it is a fun time.
I give the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special a 9 out of 10. 
I'd need to see Guardians 2 and 3 first, but yeah, I've heard good things.