I Am Groot (2022-2023)

Starring: Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, and Jeffrey Wright
Grade: C-

Once again, Vin Diesel cons himself into another paycheck.

He needs to give his agent a raise.

Summary

The entire thing is a series of three-minute shorts starring Groot (Diesel). A summary of each short is as follows:

1. Groot’s First Steps: It starts with Groot still stuck in a flowerpot because his legs haven’t grown back yet. Stationed robots replace Groot and his pot with another plant once his pot gets a crack in it, and he gets mad. Eventually, a scuffle happens, and both fall to the floor, with Groot being able to walk again.
2. The Little Guy: After Groot creates a playhouse and it’s immediately destroyed by an alien bird of sorts, Groot stumbles next to a hole to find a bunch of alien insects existing. Once he starts to mess with them, they start attacking until a leaf from Groot falls inside the hole. These minuscule aliens rejoice because they have food for a lifetime, so Groot grabs a tree branch to bring back to them, but he accidentally steps in the hole.
3. Groot’s Pursuit: Groot feels some sort of disturbance on the ship in the middle of the night. After a little while, he comes face to face with a shapeshifting alien, gets into a dance battle with him, and sends him flying into space following his critique of Groot’s dance moves.
4. Groot Takes a Bath: Groot has a mud bath on some random planet, and leaves start growing immediately after on his body. He tries out different hairstyles and costumes consisting of leaves, but they all fall off. Eventually, he settles on a scarf made out of some weird, parrot-looking animal that was laughing at him throughout.
5. Magnum Opus: Groot grabs a myriad of random supplies to draw a picture of the Guardians of the Galaxy together. However, during the process, he destroys a room in the ship. Rocket (Cooper) shows up to yell at him, but he gives in because of the cuteness of the picture Groot drew.
6. Are You My Groot?: Groot wanders into a forest and sees a strange egg. It hatches into a colorful bird, and he pals around with it, feeds it, and gets to understand it better as it shits all over the place. Eventually, Groot is annoyed with the bird and locks it in his backpack, prompting a bunch of other similar birds to come out and chase him. It all leads to the group of birds going back to their mother, who is the size of Godzilla. Groot bids farewell to the bird, who sends him down some food once it leaves.
7. Groot Noses Around: Groot plays video games, but his controller dies. Seeing that he needs some batteries, he searches around the ship and falls into a container with a bunch of random items. One of them is a prosthetic nose, and it gets stuck on his face. At first, he’s scared, but then he realizes how awesome a nose is and starts smelling things all over the ship. Later, he gets back to his room and smells the pigsty he’s been living in. Just as it looks like he’s about to clean the place, he uses the feather duster to pry off the nose, going back to playing video games.
8. Groot’s Snow Day: The ship is stationed on some icy planet. So, Groot goes about the day making hot chocolate and throwing snowballs at the ship and such. After stacking some snowballs, he’s inspired to create a snowman. Sadly, he uses parts from the ship, and it comes alive and starts attacking him. It starts to make its way towards the ship. Since Groot doesn’t want his hot chocolate to be messed with, he starts to throw snowballs at the robot snowman, with one hitting it directly on the engine part. This ignites a kill switch of sorts, and the snowman is shot into the sky, and it explodes. As Groot happily gets back on the ship, we see one part of the robot is still alive.
9. Groot’s Sweet Treat: Groot sees an ice cream spaceship float by. After accidentally dropping a coin down the vent and failing to save it, he searches desperately for money. This leads him to a claw machine. He breaks in but is angered to find that the coin prizes are just chocolate. Following him angrily breaking the machine, he manages to find some money. Sadly, Groot sees the ice cream ship fly by right after. Determined, he crashes the ship directly into the ice cream ship, destroying it. He gets his ice cream but ships from the Nova Corps surround the scene.
10. Groot and the Great Prophecy: The fifth-dimensional being known as the Watcher (Wright) narrates, talking about a monumental prophecy about to be fulfilled. Enshrined in an ancient temple is the last seed of Drez-Lar. Legend says the seed will emerge from this hallowed ground and usher the universe into a glorious new age. However, it needs to be plucked from its resting place. This is where Groot comes in, as he is the “Chosen One” who is supposed to fulfill this prophecy. Groot shows up to the temple and goes through all the traps set with ease. Once he steps on one part of the ground however, another trap sends lava pouring down onto the seed, giving Groot very little time to grab it. Even so, Groot is distracted by his ball after losing it, draws on the wall, takes a piss, and even takes a nap to the point where the Watcher is annoyed and confused at Groot’s carelessness and lack of urgency. Finally, Groot finds his way back to the seed, but it’s just because his ball was lodged into it. As he celebrates, the seed melts in the lava and the temple falls apart. Miraculously, Groot emerges. The Watcher discovers that the prophecy speaking of a seed with “great potential sprouting from this very place” is Groot himself. He laughs it off, realizing it was all a metaphor.

My Thoughts:

In all honesty, I have no idea why I watched this. Marvel and Disney make it sound like everything they put out together is a must-watch to understand what’s going on in the MCU, but I assure you this: I Am Groot is a complete waste of time. The only reason I watched it was because I’m in a Guardians mood, but there was no reason for this to be made. It’s that simple. The double-edged sword with I Am Groot is that though it’s almost completely irrelevant, each short is only around three minutes (the credits are almost as long as the shorts themselves) and the content is totally harmless. In fact, the two seasons can be watched in under a half hour if you’re good at skipping credits quickly and are generally in a hurry. Then again, if you are in a hurry, why the hell are you watching this?

It’s truly baffling as to why Disney shelled out money for this to be made. They should’ve just saved the money instead and used it to fix the CGI on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

If you’re interested, the best episodes were “The Little Guy” (probably the best all-around story of all the episodes), “Magnum Opus” (because Rocket’s much-needed appearance), and “Groot and the Great Prophecy” (Jeffrey Wright as The Watcher needs to be a long-term thing).

The quality of the shorts isn’t bad, and the humor is innocent and light-hearted, but the grade is low because this has no reason to exist. It can be cute at times, but realistically, no one needs to waste their time watching this. If they made it into one short film and set up each segment Robot Chicken-style, it might have helped the pacing. This way, we don’t have to waste so much time skipping the fucking intro and credits ten times over. Even then, it wouldn’t have made I Am Groot any more important. This is toddler type shit and makes my job as a critic drag because I should be spending my time doing something productive. Sadly, if there is a Season Three, I HAVE to watch it. Otherwise, it will bother the fuck out of me.

This is more of a “me” problem though. I can’t blame Groot for that.