Review
JAMIE EAST AT THE MOVIES
Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp builds up to a satisfying finale and makes for a decent summer holiday movie
This is Marvel’s 20th film in a mere decade, which is a pretty staggering achievement whatever your thoughts on the (over?)saturation of comic-book superheroes.
But before we get the ‘Captain Marvel’ origin and the promised emotional behemoth of Infinity War pt 2, lets rewind a few years to a post ‘Civil War’ timeline for the second outing of Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, with Evangeline Lilly getting bumped up to full hero status as The Wasp.
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The first Ant-Man was not, in my opinion, Marvel’s best work. A slightly farty film that just breezed in and out without adding any real worth to the universe, arriving at a time we were still thirsty for set-up and links to the wider story arc.
Doctor Strange was yet to appear - Civil War hadn’t upped the stakes a billion times over and Guardians of the Galaxy had already sated our comedy appetites.
However, after the devastation of Infinity War’s last 10 minutes, this lighter, frothier romp feels like a sorbet palate cleanser during an amazing meal - You wouldn’t miss it had it not appeared, but it’s a welcome addition.
After his gigantic appearance to save (some) of the Avengers, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is under house arrest (“No Stark can be trusted” according to Hank Pym) and attempting to serve his time whilst being a good dad.
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After a weird dream/vision he is compelled to reestablish contact with Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and together they attempt to save Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer playing Hope’s mother) who as we learnt in the last film, is trapped in the Quantum Realm, presumed dead.
All this must obviously occur whilst fighting off unwanted attention from various foes in the shape of the mysterious Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), criminal Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins) and obligatory disgruntled science partner Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne).
It’s as straightforward as that to be honest - there’s little weaving of storylines, no jumping through dimensions or confusing shifts in time - just your standard “Here’s an obvious thing we need to do, if only these people weren’t trying to stop us.”
It’s small (if you’ll excuse the pun) but that’s it’s charm.
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It’s still ‘Inner Space’ mixed with ‘Honey I Shrunk The Kids’ but Rudd brings an innocent wit that’s pretty irresistible.
It doesn’t proclaim to be anything other than fun and delivers it in spades.
Refreshingly almost entirely rid of the shackles of the greater MCU (save for some tantalising teases at its potential Thanos solution) it’s better for it.
There is still plenty of mileage in the shrinking and expanding of everyday objects (an entire building is wheeled around like hand luggage and a matchbox car collection turns out to be something WAY cooler) and the combination of Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer together on screen is brilliant (scenes where the young versions appear in a flashback should make Star Wars and Justice League take some CGI notes).
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No proper baddie to speak of (This is all science, rather than inter-planetary based jeopardy) was the real risk though - and while no, we couldn’t stomach another Thanos threatening the destruction of the entire universe again so soon, this film suffers from a jeopardy vacuum.
MOST READ IN FILM
Walton Goggins is getting some great gigs, but all too often he’s left to be the dull Southern bad guy. He’s a bloody great actor (His turn as Venus Van Dam in Sons of Anarchy is incredible) and is sorely underused here.
It builds up to a satisfying finale, contains some rather deliciously silly science (molecular disequilebrium anyone?!) and keeps the Hollywood tradition of having flip phones as people’s main form of contact (510 million flip phones were shipped worldwide in 2016 - Who knew!) but didn’t do much to tantalise me for a third outing.
A decent and rollicking summer holiday movie compared to most others, but miniature in the grand scheme of Marvel.
Ant-Man and the Wasp, 118mins (12A)
★★★★☆
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