Ant-Man
Directed by: Peyton Reed
Written by: Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish and Adam McKay and Paul Rudd
Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Canavale, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Fortson, Michael Peña, David Dastmalchian, Tip "T.I." Harris, Wood Harris, Martin Donovan
Action/Sci-Fi - 117 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 14 July 2015
Written by: Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish and Adam McKay and Paul Rudd
Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Canavale, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Fortson, Michael Peña, David Dastmalchian, Tip "T.I." Harris, Wood Harris, Martin Donovan
Action/Sci-Fi - 117 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 14 July 2015
Did you have a tight group of friends in high school or college? Did you form your clique as freshmen dodging upper classmen in the hallways together and forming a protective barrier around your lunch table in the cafeteria? There was strength in numbers. One day, you realize there is no more looking over your shoulder, you were the upper classmen; younger and meeker folk watched out for you. Perhaps an eager underclassman even attempted to infiltrate your select group, the gall. Ant-Man is that underclassman. Ant-Man stood back and watched Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America band together with some other folks and strut around the student parking lot as The Avengers. Well, Ant-Man is a wallflower no more; he wants his turn. The ingredients are here, a likeable leading man, a pretty girl, gee-whiz computer tricks, and the comic relief, but just like that wannabe freshman, the whole package is raw and unformed; it will take another long summer of puberty for a specimen like Ant-Man to mature and catch up with his elders.
Disney, already running at full stride with its Marvel cash cow, digs deep into the comic book anthology to pull out Ant-Man. I had never heard of this particular superhero until news of the film sprung up online. Ant-Man isn’t riding solo however; Disney plops him into the Avenger universe and I will not say who, but a familiar face pops up as a sort of gang rite of passage/one-on-one fight takes place. This should all be to the chagrin of parents; now that their children finally got hold of that specific toy they wanted from Avengers: Age of Ultron, they will now ask for that exact same guy, but from Ant-Man. Shrewd move Disney.
Disney, already running at full stride with its Marvel cash cow, digs deep into the comic book anthology to pull out Ant-Man. I had never heard of this particular superhero until news of the film sprung up online. Ant-Man isn’t riding solo however; Disney plops him into the Avenger universe and I will not say who, but a familiar face pops up as a sort of gang rite of passage/one-on-one fight takes place. This should all be to the chagrin of parents; now that their children finally got hold of that specific toy they wanted from Avengers: Age of Ultron, they will now ask for that exact same guy, but from Ant-Man. Shrewd move Disney.
Thumbs up to casting Paul Rudd (2013’s This Is the End) as the man/insect. Rudd is an identifiable everyman kind of guy; you could easily sit next to Rudd on a bar stool, order a PBR, and not once have the itch to ask for an autograph. America loves Paul Rudd; he’s the male Sandra Bullock. I don’t think he’s ever played a villain, we wouldn’t believe him anyway. He’s just a goofy guy, usually over his head, befuddled by life and women. Tony Stark made himself Iron Man, Steve Rogers became Captain America in a mad scientist sort of way, and Thor is, well, a God. I don’t know how those are made. But Scott Lang does not ask to become Ant-Man; it is really a choice between prison or superhero.
Good guy brilliant scientist, Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, 2011’s Haywire), manipulates poor Scott into becoming the most micro of men. Pym needs Scott to thwart evil guy brilliant scientist Darren Cross (Corey Stoll, 2014’s Non-Stop). Cross is on the verge of discovering how to shrink people who will then become the ultimate war machines, almost invisible to the eye and capable of wreaking serious havoc. Dr. Pym discovered all of this decades ago but shut it down when he realized what would happen when it inevitably fell into the wrong hands.
A major strike against Ant-Man is this exact feeling of inevitability. We can see every plot twist and narrative turn a half hour away. You don’t even have to have seen and be familiar with the previous Avenger films to break this, not so much a code, but more a word jumble. We know Scott will accept with resignation his new life as Ant-Man, we know what evil Dr. Cross is going to do, and we pretty much know how Scott’s problems with his ex-wife and her new fiancé and going to work out. The audience may as well bring a checklist along to keep track of every scene we know is on the way. You can step out for an extended bathroom break, check out the concession stand, and stroll back in the theater and know exactly where you are in the film.
At least the CGI work and comic relief are up to par. Since this specific superhero must frequently become small to perform his uncanny stunts, the computers behind it all go into overdrive. I don’t know how much work cinematographer Russell Carpenter had to do here as there is a lot of green screen involved to put tiny Scott into the tiniest of places, inside ant farm mazes and inside water pipes. Carpenter should be familiar with CGI work because he was James Cameron’s cinematographer on Titanic, a film not actually shot in the frigid North Atlantic Ocean.
Peyton Reed is an unlikely director on a production as large as a Marvel film, but his comedy chops frequently break through as Ant-Man has its fair share of laughs. Michael Peña (2014’s Fury) and T.I. (2015’s Get Hard) are two of Scott’s inept crime posse responsible for most of the chuckles and Reed’s time behind the camera on Yes Man (2008), The Break-Up (2006), and even Bring It On (2000) was not wasted. Reed was an after-thought hire however as original director and screenwriter Edgar Wright jumped ship late in the game over creative differences.
Reed did the best with what he had though. It is not easy to elbow your way into the center of attention after the Avengers have been blowing up screens all over the globe the last few years. The 3D, normally an unnecessary nuisance, adds to our enjoyment and helps out a bit as we view a distorted world from an ant’s viewpoint. The villains are way too far over-the-top and might as well throw their heads back and cackle as they sneer and scheme. For what it’s worth, Ant-Man is a minor entry in the Marvel universe. It could stick around and become a younger brother to its elders, or it could spin off and form a clique with heroes its own age; we’ll see.
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