Review: Ant-Man

Paul Rudd plays Scott, a recently released convicted thief who wants to put his life back together so that he can have better access to his estranged daughter and be a good dad. Unfortunately, times are tough and there just doesn’t seem to be any career opportunities for him. When one of his no-good buddies (Michael Pena) suggests a ‘job’ that’ll help with the cash flow situation, Scott agrees to do a break in at some old rich guy’s place. The job seemingly turns out to be a dud, though, as the only thing Scott finds in the safe is a strange outfit. He takes the article of clothing with him, and when he tries it on, he realises this is no ordinary suit. In fact, a switch attached to it shrinks Scott down to the size of an insect!

 

The suit’s owner, Dr. Pym (Michael Douglas) was observing the robbery remotely the whole time and has him arrested. However, it turns out that Dr. Pym (an entomologist) actually set the entire thing up for Scott to find his Ant-Man suit. Pym, who not only designed the Ant-Man suit, but long ago wore it as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (before quitting due to tragic circumstance), now needs someone to replace him, and although his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) wants desperately to be the one, Dr. Pym has decided it will be Scott. You see, Dr. Pym’s protégé Cross (Corey Stoll) is now CEO of Pym’s technology company after a hostile takeover pushed Pym out. Cross is ambitious, a jerk, and possibly even worse. More importantly, he’s been trying desperately to discover the secret of the Ant-Man suit so that he can create his own variant for your typical super-soldier purposes. Pym says fuck that, and wants Scott in the Ant-Man suit to break into his old company with Hope (who still works there, and pretends to be on Cross’ side) and put a stop to Stoll’s plans before it’s too late. Judy Greer and Bobby Cannavale play Scott’s ex and her new squeeze, a cop. T.I. plays another criminal associate of Scott’s, Martin Donovan plays a former colleague of Pym’s now happily working under the less scrupulous Cross, whilst “SNL” original Garrett Morris has a cameo as a cabbie.

 

Although it definitely belongs to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and ties into current MCU movie lore, one of the things I liked about this 2015 flick from Peyton Reed (“The Break-Up”, “Yes Man”) is that if you took out all of the references to other MCU characters, the film would still work perfectly fine (Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra play a part in the film, but honestly I’d barely notice that they’re involved here until a certain African-American superhero turns up to make it pretty overt). Even with the references and character inclusions, it never felt to me like Reed and the screenwriters were restricted in their storytelling too much by having to hit certain beats to set up subsequent films. Oh, that stuff is there from time to time, sure, but it still felt like this film was given enough room for its own story, characters, and (crucially) tone to breathe. Here’s a MCU film that wasn’t afraid to be silly, jokey, and rather unpretentious. Yeah, an unpretentious MCU film, I’m shocked too.

 

The film sounded terrible to me based on the title and comedic actor Paul Rudd in the title role, but I’ve gotta say I ended up enjoying this quite a lot. In fact, the fact that the tone was often tongue-in-cheek not only didn’t feel jarring or counter-productive to the action heroics, but it meant that Rudd’s casting also worked. I’ve always felt that Robert Downey Jr.’s glib persona works against the “Iron Man” and “Avengers” films, but Rudd’s laidback humour is a better fit here because the film itself isn’t entirely serious, either. A tongue-in-cheek superhero film is difficult to pull off, but this film pretty much gets it right. It also works because Rudd has a much more humble, nice guy screen presence here than Downey’s glib Tony Stark (Downey’s obviously the vastly superior actor, though. The problem is that he knows it). I don’t especially like the idea of a petty crim turned superhero, but this guy’s backstory is entertaining and sympathetic, as is Rudd himself. Once he actually becomes the title superhero, he still works, which isn’t always the case in these sorts of things. Perhaps having a hand in the screenplay himself helped Rudd here, I dunno. But whatever the reason, he’s perfectly fine in the film, and of all of the MCU superheroes, Rudd’s Ant-Man is the only one I would say I’d like to see more of in the future.

 

I’m sure the science in this is all bollocks, but I liked all of the “Incredible Shrinking Man” stuff as Rudd deals with being miniaturised. I liked that he is able to shrink and re-size himself very easily. One of the problems I saw heading into the film was that if he was ant-sized all of the time, that would make for a shithouse superhero, so I’d fail to see much point/use in that. Thankfully that’s not the case. One problem I did encounter, however, was that having the whole conflict essentially revolving around a suit/business squabbles underwhelmed me a tad. It doesn’t kill the film, though it also reminds one of “Iron Man” and “RoboCop”. This is a lot more fun than “Iron Man”, thankfully, and Corey Stoll is surprisingly really impressive as essentially the chief villain. A little like Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor (but a little more intimidating, as “Superman Returns” was far from Spacey’s best work) with a hint of Peter Sarsgaard, it’s probably the best performance I’ve seen Stoll give and he walks off with the film. Michael Pena is also typically amusing as Rudd’s best bud, whilst Martin Donovan is perfectly cast in a small role. Michael Douglas is enjoyable as the benevolent inventor, even if it’s hardly the best use of his talents.

 

I said earlier that I had a slight problem with the plot, but for me the only serious flaw is the performance given by Evangeline Lilly, and even she isn’t enough to spoil the fun. However, I still must say that she appears to do all of her acting with her dopey haircut. It seems an ill fit for her face, too actually and more importantly she seems to get lost underneath her fringe. It looks like her character will have a bigger role to play in future films, so perhaps she’ll figure out how to get out from underneath her hair by then. Or get a different hairstyle.

 

Although it does end up playing into the MCU, for the most part this is a fun superhero movie that for a change, doesn’t have its head up its own arse. With a sense of humour that doesn’t involve standing to the side of itself and mocking, and a likeable protagonist, I had fun with this one. It’s nothing great, but for now I’m just glad that its duties to the MCU still allowed for it to be its own thing. The screenplay is by Joe Cornish (writer-director of the stupid “Attack the Block”), Adam McKay (director of “Anchorman” and the underrated buddy cop comedy “The Other Guys”), Edgar Wright (director of the overrated “Shaun of the Dead” and the highly underrated “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”), and Rudd himself from a story by Cornish and Wright, and based on the comic book characters created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Larry Lieber. 

 

Rating: B-