'Ant-Man' review by Jake Boyle
I told myself I wouldn't get excited. I promised. They took the film Edgar Wright had been developing for nearly a decade and pushed him away from the project, but even their aggravation of the director I revere the most couldn't overcome my intrinsic Marvel fanboy nature. Besides, if the script has to be rewritten, Adam McKay and Paul Rudd are reassuringly competent hands, one would think. So, yeah, I did get excited for Ant-Man in the final month or so before its release, and as you've probably figured out by now, I'm feeling pretty foolish about that.
Perhaps the one thing that Ant-Man is most sorely lacking is the idiosyncrasies and occasional offbeat ticks that have made previous fan favourites such as Iron Man and Guardians Of The Galaxy so beloved. A thief who can shrink himself and communicate with ants is a promisingly oddball premise, but there aren't as many attempts at humour as there needs to be, and the jokes that are made often fall flat, neither written or delivered with much assurance. This might perhaps be an unavoidable consequence of changing the script and director midway through production, but nevertheless there's a dire lack of charisma on display. It's especially notable given that Ant-Man is understandably light on action for much of its runtime, meaning that great swathes of the movies are just dry exposition, despite the best efforts of an impressively energetic Michael Peña. The training sequence in the second act is nearly excruciatingly dull, and made me yearn for the days when a cheesy but brief montage would have sufficed. This section seriously calls into question the directing ability of Peyton Reed, seemingly incapable of carrying out even the simplest of jokes (apparently the way to execute a pratfall is not to see it at all and just see other characters roll their eyes). It's made worse by a truly miserable performance from Evangeline Lily, whose underwritten character is further diminished by her apparently having no comprehension of how human facial expressions work.
As damning as all that is, Ant-Man isn't spectacularly bad, really, just disappointing coming from the MCU. Things really pick up for the final half an hour, when the action starts flowing better and fully embracing the premise - the climactic showdown partially takes place inside a suitcase and on a toy train track, and while the interspersing wide shots showing how inconsequential their fighting appears is quite an obvious joke, it does regain the film a needed sense of knowing. Paul Rudd doesn't make as charming or funny a lead as expected of him, but he's not a total wash; some of the film's worst moments (such as a kiss at the end that truly pushes new boundaries for chemistry-free forced romances) are made less awkward by his natural affability, and while no aspect of his performance is as promising as Peña's, I do think he'll serve well in Markus and McFeely's presumably stronger script for Captain America: Civil War. In terms of visuals, the film is once again disappointingly bland until the end, where a highly predictable moment is immeasurably improved by the inclusion of some trippy kaleidoscopic special effects that could have been taken from the end of Interstellar.
Ant-Man is not a good film, but it is also not a truly bad film. That's damning with faint praise already, but given the general level of quality of Marvel films and the potential this film began with, it's hard not to feel that all things considered, this is a failure. It's not without merit and the last thirty minutes were unambiguously enjoyable, but none of that is enough to overcome the significant flaws that riddle the movie. Without wanting to sound bitter, Edgar Wright would almost certainly have made a much better movie, and while the end product is mostly watchable with some encouraging moments, it's telling that the strongest of all these moments is Falcon making a joke about Captain America - completely unconnected to the main storyline and characters, and simply reminding the audience of the superiority of Marvel's other properties.
Perhaps the one thing that Ant-Man is most sorely lacking is the idiosyncrasies and occasional offbeat ticks that have made previous fan favourites such as Iron Man and Guardians Of The Galaxy so beloved. A thief who can shrink himself and communicate with ants is a promisingly oddball premise, but there aren't as many attempts at humour as there needs to be, and the jokes that are made often fall flat, neither written or delivered with much assurance. This might perhaps be an unavoidable consequence of changing the script and director midway through production, but nevertheless there's a dire lack of charisma on display. It's especially notable given that Ant-Man is understandably light on action for much of its runtime, meaning that great swathes of the movies are just dry exposition, despite the best efforts of an impressively energetic Michael Peña. The training sequence in the second act is nearly excruciatingly dull, and made me yearn for the days when a cheesy but brief montage would have sufficed. This section seriously calls into question the directing ability of Peyton Reed, seemingly incapable of carrying out even the simplest of jokes (apparently the way to execute a pratfall is not to see it at all and just see other characters roll their eyes). It's made worse by a truly miserable performance from Evangeline Lily, whose underwritten character is further diminished by her apparently having no comprehension of how human facial expressions work.
As damning as all that is, Ant-Man isn't spectacularly bad, really, just disappointing coming from the MCU. Things really pick up for the final half an hour, when the action starts flowing better and fully embracing the premise - the climactic showdown partially takes place inside a suitcase and on a toy train track, and while the interspersing wide shots showing how inconsequential their fighting appears is quite an obvious joke, it does regain the film a needed sense of knowing. Paul Rudd doesn't make as charming or funny a lead as expected of him, but he's not a total wash; some of the film's worst moments (such as a kiss at the end that truly pushes new boundaries for chemistry-free forced romances) are made less awkward by his natural affability, and while no aspect of his performance is as promising as Peña's, I do think he'll serve well in Markus and McFeely's presumably stronger script for Captain America: Civil War. In terms of visuals, the film is once again disappointingly bland until the end, where a highly predictable moment is immeasurably improved by the inclusion of some trippy kaleidoscopic special effects that could have been taken from the end of Interstellar.
Ant-Man is not a good film, but it is also not a truly bad film. That's damning with faint praise already, but given the general level of quality of Marvel films and the potential this film began with, it's hard not to feel that all things considered, this is a failure. It's not without merit and the last thirty minutes were unambiguously enjoyable, but none of that is enough to overcome the significant flaws that riddle the movie. Without wanting to sound bitter, Edgar Wright would almost certainly have made a much better movie, and while the end product is mostly watchable with some encouraging moments, it's telling that the strongest of all these moments is Falcon making a joke about Captain America - completely unconnected to the main storyline and characters, and simply reminding the audience of the superiority of Marvel's other properties.
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