Movie Rating 7 out of 10
Family Rating Superhero violence but no blood, few minor swear words,
Having watched the second of the Ant-Man movies I realise that if it weren’t for Paul Rudd and Michael Pena then this series would not have much appeal at all. The original movie showed how Ant-Man could shrink and grow tall, the powers he possessed but mostly that out of the suit, Scott Lang, was a regular divorced father dealing with family issues. In Civil War, we saw him in action on the side of Captain America and his abilities were shown to better effect. However, in this movie, it appears to be more of the same without much plot and at nearly two hours there were large stretches without much action.
A big question coming into this movie is why wasn’t Ant-Man part of the Infinity movie. A minor spoiler alert that isn’t clearly spelt out is the fact that after the big battle scene in Civil War, Ant-Man is captured and put into 2 years home detention. If he takes on any superhero duties during this period he will be jailed for 20 years and he is not willing to jeopardise his relationship with his daughter. The beginning of the movie sees him with only a couple of days to go on his home detention before he is freed and throughout the movie an inept FBI agent tries to catch him breaking his parole conditions.
The movie introduces Hope as the Wasp (Evangeline Lily) as she has been given a super suit by her father, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) that allows her to do the shrinking thing as well. They set off to try to find Hope’s mother who was shrunk to a microbe size some 30 years earlier. Along the way, they are constantly chased by a bad guy, Sonny Burch, who wants the technology that they are using. They also have to fight off The Ghost and her carer who used to be one of Hank’s research partners. There is a lot of racing around the streets of San Francisco with cars that shrink and then return to size.
The comedy in the movie comes through Michael Pena’s character, Luis, and his two assistants. The truth serum sequence is quite funny. But apart from that, a couple of fight scenes, and the car chase there is not much holding it together …. until the credits. As with all Marvel movies you never leave the theatre until the credits have ended. In this movie, the highlight of the film comes during the first post credit clip. You could hear the audience gasp when it is played.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad movie but certainly not up to the standard of recent Marvel movies. The ending must have some relevance in the next Avenger story and this was just the vehicle to carry it there.