Ant-Man and The Wasp: Marvel at the Weird

It's easy to accuse Marvel, especially these days, of resting on their laurels and being afraid of taking any adverse chances. Sure, they've talked a lot of actually going through with a Squirrel Girl movie and their recent attempts at introducing “different” characters via television (Legion, The Runaways) have been mostly successful, but, from a strictly corporate angle, it's still very clear they'd rather you watched Black Panther (a soulless, unoriginal action movie) or Infinity Wars (a franchise-friendly cop out). While I won't say that all of their obviously audience-friendly characters aren't worth watching, its often sad that, for all the thousands of characters that exist in the Marvel Universe to begin with, we as an audience will never see most of them due to their more R-rated credentials (Deadpool needed Fox to exist) or mostly obscure relevence to modern times (Cloak & Dagger are pretty much just murderous vigilantes). This is why, when Ant-Man rears his tiny head, I tend to be perfectly happy to jump on that bandwagon with gusto.

Yes, consumers of the Weird World of Marvel, Ant-Man and The Wasp is awesome. Paul Rudd is still the perfect Scott Lang, Michael Douglass is still fun as the aging and still curmudgenly Hank Pym, the perspective humor from the original is still spot-on with the premise, the action is fun and the minimalist approach, especially considering the world-in-peril schtick of more recent Marvel output, is an entertaining diversion from all the excess fat this franchise has begun to accumulate. Throw in yet another near perfect turn by Michael Pena as the fast-talking, gibbering human foil to the more serious, beat-the-bad-guy-and-look-awesome-doing-it mentality of the actual hero side of the equation and you have something just as unexpected as the first Ant-Man: human characters getting in way over their heads and succeeding through sheer force of will and a keen eye on the ridiculousness of the whole situation (tiny heroes with big problems).

Sadly, while the original cast is fun and, for the now third movie in a row, there's yet another interesting and compelling villain in Ghost (Hannah Joh-Kamen), Randall Park's Agent Woo is forced to take all the flak as arguably the worst new character in a Marvel movie in recent memory. Mostly relegated to awkward plot dumps and even more awkwardly written lines that probably sounded funny in the script writer's head, Woo exists as a dork who is trying to be more and, through poorly written characterization and over reliance on Park's underused charisma and natural talent at humor, falls flat and turns into little more than a punchline that isn't funny no matter what angle you look at it. You had me the juice box gag, Marvel! You didn't have to overplay your hand with too many characters.

As for watching it, why aren't you already at the theater as of this writing? Not only is it a Marvel movie for the enabling of your inner nerd, but you have something small (no pun intended) and compact enough not to get too wrapped into all the other big stuff happening everywhere else in the world. Are you tired of Disney and their seemingly infinite control over what you consume in theaters? This is going to be more of the same, but at least you don't have to worry about Thanos popping in an screwing it all up.

Peyton Reed (Bring It On) proves that making cheerleading movies really was a fluke with Ant-Man and The Wasp, a gonzo action comedy that is literally about rooting for the little guy. Nearing the end of his house arrest over the events of Civil War, Scott (Rudd) is pulled back into superhero stuff when Hank (Douglass) and Hope (Evangeline Lilly) recruit him in an attempt to find Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeifer), the original Wasp who was trapped in the quantum realm after going subatomic decades before the events of the first Iron Man. Tiny things will be enlarged for comic results, Luis (Pena) will show off just how much more he talks under a truth serum, most of the humor will be spot-on size comparisons and you'll kind of find yourself rooting for Ghost (John-Kamen) when you realize just what she's kind of going through. They fight bad guys and you don't know who to root for because you like both sides. How bipolar is that?

My score: 7/10.