Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp

Confidence will take you a long way in life, and the Marvel movies ooze that stuff. Ant-Man and the Wasp never doubts for a second that its audience is totally here for pretty much anything it feels like serving up, up to and including basing a large chunk of the plot around things that happened to lead character Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) between movies. What's next? Starting the next Iron Man movie with Tony Stark played by a dog while Pepper Potts says "oh yeah, remember when you had your brain transplanted last week, that was so cool"?

So if you're wondering how you missed the moment when Lang was arrested, cut a deal, and was placed under house arrest, don't worry about it: you've got bigger fish to fry. For a film that's probably the lowest-stakes Marvel movie to date* by a very wide margin, this features a lot of plot threads, including but not limited to: Lang waiting out the final days of house arrest, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) wanting to shrink down into the micro-verse to rescue his long-lost wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), Pym’s daughter / fellow shrinking super-hero The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) slowly restarting her low-key relationship with Lang, a sinister arms dealer (Walton Goggins), a vanishing villain named Ghost (Abby Rider Forston) and Lawrence Fishburne because why not? 

Throw in a half dozen supporting characters left over from the previous film and what this lacks in big drama it more than makes up for in big casting. Combine those low stakes with a super-power more suited to (often excellent) visual gags than slam-down fights (though there are a few of those thrown in too), and the whole thing has a vaguely retro-70s caper feel even before the whole "lets get in a tiny spaceship and shrink down to microscopic size via a cheesy-looking tunnel" thing kicks into gear. Also, there are giant ants.

Director Peyton Reed took over the first Ant-Man film when writer-director Edgar Wright was pushed out, and while a handful of Wright's gags from the first film return here (tiny cars are funny; Michael Pena doing a rapid-fire monologue is also funny) Peyton isn't going for big laughs so much as he is a general feel-good vibe. It's a hang-out movie: there's just enough going on to keep the central characters interesting, while everyone else is pretty much there to get a laugh or two.

Marvel have worked hard to turn every movie genre into a branch of superhero-ville, with limited success (Thor only really worked when it gave up on fantasy; they haven't even tried horror despite having The Hulk right there). Superhero comedy is definitely something that can work, but the Mighty Marvel Manner is currently built more around the occasional quip than going full-bore for laughs and this does a decent job of showing why.

Marvel superhero movies work because they're pretty much the best superhero movies around; why settle for second best? But Ant-Man and the Wasp isn't a great superhero movie, and it's not really a great comedy. The banter isn't all it could be, and the lack of any consistent laugh-out-loud moments leaves things feeling a little lightweight. Which is fatal, because while Marvel might not have much competition on the superhero front, there are plenty of other movies and television shows that do lightweight really really well. This might have charm and a strong cast having a fun time, but the worst thing a superhero movie can currently be is inessential; enjoyable this might be, but a must-see it ain't.

Anthony Morris 


*it's set before Avengers: Infinity War