“Ant-Man” is another Marvel movie with an avuncular leading man, like “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Marvel Comic superheroes weren’t square jaw, straight arrow types. They had misfit, class clown DNA – like their wiseacre teenage readers – that was usually altered by some kind of chemical accident or cosmic ray.
Ant-Man is no exception. The same goes for Paul Rudd, the comic actor playing him, who invited everyone to his mother’s house for a kegger after Kansas City made the World Series.
At a time when self-referential architecture of Marvel has become pretentiously dense, “Ant-Man” returns to the simpler days of “The Incredible Shrinking Man” and “Fantastic Voyage,” when big ideas came in small packages.
Rudd plays a cat burglar – his wacky sidekicks include wine and art loving Michael Pena – who breaks into the safe of an industrialist, played by Michael Douglas, that houses what looks like a motorcycle racer outfit.
But the first time he puts it on he immediately shrinks, falls through a drain and runs a gamut microscopic close calls. Turns out Douglas stage managed the break in because he wanted Rudd to find the suit and use it to steal technology his former apprentice, played by Corey Stoll, is weaponizing.
The science behind the suit? Well, never mind.
Soon Rudd is running with the ants in a insect version of Pamplona. But it turns out, small things are not very interesting to watch, and not even 3D makes the miniature scenes involving.
Size is not the only thing that makes it feel smaller than other big box Marvel films whose characters are mentioned in passing, and of whom Falcon, played by Anthony Mackie makes an appearance.
Two after credit sequences tie “Ant-Man” to the Marvel brotherhood. But parallel father-daughter subplots meant to give the story heart feel obligatory, like boxes being ticked off.
Humorous drop ins – from droll Rudd’s tart remarks to go-big-or-go-home prop comedy scenes – is the sound of people having fun with the very idea they are exploiting. Those people include Peyton Reed, director of “Bring It On” and “The Break-Up” and “Shaun of the Dead” director Edgar Wright, who co-wrote “Ant-Man” with Rudd and “Anchorman” director Adam McKay.
A fight on a moving train takes place on a Thomas the Tank Engine train set in a child’s bedroom.
The shrunken version is filled with big screen action that seen from a normal perspective are a bunch of tiny pops and flashes. Another sequence has Ant-Man racing across a scale model of a development as flying bullets tear it it apart like a parody of the full-sized cities destroyed in “The Avengers” and effects driven films like it.
The tongue in cheek moments are in the tradition of “Back to The Future” from a time when high concept films were not afraid to laugh at themselves. People still talk about those damn hover-boards.
*** Three stars
With Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Forston, Michael Pena, David Dastmalchian, T.I. Produced by Kevin Feige. Written by Edgar Wright, Adam McKay, Joe Cornish, Paul Rudd. Directed by Peyton Reed. Rated PG-13, fantasy violence. Approximate running time: 117 minutes.
Tags: Ant Man, Anthony Mackie, Marvel, Paul Rudd Posted by