Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is on the last two days of court-mandated home detention for what went down during “Captain America: Civil War”, whilst scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and his daughter Hope (Evangelina Lilly) aren’t currently thrilled with him either for the aforementioned Avengers exploits. However, when Scott appears to be getting  visions/contact from Pym’s wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer). Getting in touch with Pym and Hope, they suggest Janet may be trapped in the quantum realm, with Scott somehow linked to the quantum realm. Hank and Hope manage to get around Scott’s home detention so that he can assist them in rescuing Janet. Complicating matters are an oily arms dealer (Walton Goggins), the FBI (represented by the far too ubiquitous Randall Park), and the troubled Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), whose character is a bit fuzzy. Laurence Fishburne plays a disgruntled former associate of Pym’s, and Michael Pena is back as Scott’s idiot friend.

Although a tiny step down from the nifty first film, this 2018 sequel from director Peyton Reed (“Ant-Man”, “Yes Man”) is somewhat underrated, though I still prefer my WASP to include Blackie Lawless. Thank you to the two of you who get that joke. I’m not sure I especially liked the cold open without any context, it’s sloppy. I called out “Infinity War” for the same thing, so I’ve gotta call out Reed and his quartet of screenwriters Andrew Barrer (“Haunt” with Jacki Weaver), Gabriel Ferrari (a debutant), Chris McKenna (“Igor”, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”), Erik Sommers (“Spider-Man: Homecoming”, “The LEGO Batman Movie”), and star Rudd for it here too. However, once this thing gets going, it’s good solid fun for those Marvel-inclined and those not so inclined.

I was a bit slow to take to Paul Rudd as an actor, but from all reports he’s a nice guy and seems very much that way on screen for the most part, too. His Scott Lang is a likeable, relatable ne’er do well who is easy to root for. He’s what Tony Stark could never be: Tony Stark is a rich smart arse leaning too far into Robert Downey Jr.’s own flippant personality (a jerk-y combination), whereas Scott is a ne’er do well smart arse filtered through Rudd’s laidback well-meaning guy.  Meanwhile, the actor himself appears to have the fountain of youth in his backyard. Dude hasn’t aged in 20 years. Seriously.

As with the first film, there’s some really fun “Incredible Shrinking Man” goings on here for comedic purposes, like pigeons that look gigantic when Scott is miniaturised etc. It’s the kind of nifty, self-contained stuff that allows me to momentarily ignore that these films are tacked onto a gigantic Marvel Happy Meal franchise. These two films seem to have gotten a little more wiggle room, a little more identity of their own, which as a non-“Avengers” die-hard, I appreciated (although, as in the case of the self-consciously quirky outlier “Thor: Ragnarok”, gallivanting off completely without a road map isn’t always a good thing). The superhero elements meanwhile, are classic stuff, with the villains all interesting. Like a lot of good villains, there’s some tragic and almost sympathetic backstory here that adds a little depth.

The cast all seem to be having fun too, which helps considering being a sequel in a gigantic comic book superhero franchise it’s hardly going to be the freshest thing in the world. I’m not the biggest Evangeline Lilly fan, but she’s fine in these films, and her stunt double does some awesome martial arts acrobatics at one point. Michael Douglas once again makes you temporarily forget that he was sleazy as fuck in the 80s and 90s. Here he’s a bit crotchety, a bit grandfatherly, and kind of an egghead to boot. And he’s solid at it. Laurence Fishburne’s mammoth presence isn’t always well-utilised these days, but he plays quite an interesting character in this film. Walton Goggins meanwhile, is perfectly punchable (Why doesn’t Microsoft Word automatically consider that a word by now?) with one hell of a shit-eating grin when we first meet him. He really is the modern-day Bruce Dern. Michelle Pfeiffer isn’t in the film much, but unlike some of her other performances in the last 5-10 years, she’s quite appropriately cast here. The one dud in the cast comes from the person playing arguably the most fascinating character in the film: Hannah John-Kamen as the troubled Ghost. She’s only about a third as interesting as the character itself, unfortunately. Outside of her performance the only thing I can really harp on here is that the film definitely needed to be 15 minutes shorter. On the plus side, the film does find a funny note to end the film on that I won’t spoil.

I liked this. It’s fun, amusing, exciting, interesting, and the characters are all pretty interesting. I can’t say that about every Marvel film. Or even most of them. Perhaps a hair less enjoyable than the first film, but barely noticeable. I wouldn’t mind a third film, actually.

Rating: B-