Ant-Man (2015)

Ant-Man (PG-13)

"Talk Loudly and carry a miniaturized stick"

Sneaking into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of it's smallest and underwhelming heroes as Ant-Man makes his unlikely screen debut.  Doubly so when it ran into production trouble as long-time project gestator Simon Wright (director/screenwriter of Shaun of the Dead, who gets writing credit here) left Marvel over creative differences.  However director Payton Reed (Bring it On) and the Marvel suits have made an entertaining sausage yet again, even if the ghost of "What If?" lingers off screen.

Paul Rudd (Fantana in Anchorman) pals around with Micheal Douglas as Ant-Man old and new.  He's an ex-con thief who is trying to go the straight and narrow for his 3yo daughters sake.  However he soon becomes embroiled in corporate espionage which somehow involves Douglas' Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man) and his daughter Hope aka Love Interest To Be Woman, aka Evangeline Lilly.  It's kind of Ironman light with more diverse comedy, the crew is out to stop Pym's old intern from selling Yellowjacket to the government, which would then use it to drone-strike everyone on the planet or something BigBusiness and Government are bad or whatever the kids on the internet are saying at this moment, hey they are our demographic right guys?  The interesting tidbit of Ant-Man being the first comic book movie to deal with a second iteration of a character, a comic book staple of a mentor training his protege to don and take over a super hero identity, isn't really focused on because hey, Rudd is pretty charming and the whole movie is kind of filler for the next MCU super blockbuster that he can then appear in, right?

The missed opportunities and nuance be damned, because Marvel once again just makes a fun movie to sit back and watch.  And hoooh boy, is this that type of movie.  Training montages?  Origin stories?  Nostalgic looks back and the Soviet Cold war?  Vaguely threatening slippery slope government types?  This movie encapsulates everything that worked in those other MCU movies and boils it down to it's audience-friendly most.  However it is the non-standard flairs that actually stand out and make Ant-Man fun.  When the plot goes away from all the white people problems and gets a little colorful the humor enters into it's own.  A fight early on with the Falcon is a diverse breath of fresh air (or is it?  Captain America would have been a stronger cameo but no where near as fun either) but Lang's crew of wacky ethnic sidekicks give the film a funny kick in the shorts that Rudd plays off of wonderfully.  When its Douglas' show all you can wonder is if the old Wolf of Wallstreet is just hoping his Pym stock price doesn't fall.  But the movie's humor shines when Luis gives Stan Lee his best cameo yet.  Added to that an exciting finale that takes too long to come (but since it involves a fight inside a crowded briefcase and on a Thomas the Train toy train set it's forgiven), and Ant-Man provides enough laughs and action to prevent 2 hours from crawling by.

The questions aren't all answered unfortunately.  Wright's version, would it have been more humor driven, more Scott Pilgrim-like and idiosyncratic than Scott Lang pathos and melodramatic?  What if Pym had invented Ultron instead of Stark like the comics foretold, it was just a couple months ago after all, would have a cameo in Avengers 2 been that hard (it would have at least provided more backstory and interest to both films, and Ant-Man was a founding Avenger after all)?  And why merrily skip by the science without even attempting to explain the gobbedygoop, its fraught with unspoken SciFi mcguffins?  How did this movie achieve the feat of making creepy crawly bugs cute sidekicks that aren't grossing every woman man and child out?  Why earn the PG13 with a lot of out of place cursing?  How long can MCU go without making a terrible film?  And how did one of the biggest inside jokes in comic-dom, the infamously unfamous Ant-Man, get his own blockbuster comic book film that kids and adults adore?  Let's see DC pull that off with The Atom.

7.5 Tales to Astonish out of 10 (GOOD)